"My subject this time is Arabia, which the natives call Jezirat-al-Arab, and the Turks and Persians Arabistan. It is a peninsula, the isthmus of which reaches across from the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean to the head of the Persian Gulf," the professor began, indicating on the map the localities mentioned with the pointer. "Asia abounds in peninsulas, and Arabia is the great south-western one. From north-west to south-east it extends 1800 miles, and is about 600 wide. It has an area of 1,230,000 square miles, which is a very indefinite statement to the mind, though given in figures, and I will adopt the commander's method of giving a better idea by comparison with some of the States of your own country.
"It is nearly five times as large as the State of Texas, the most extensive of the Union, and almost twenty-six times as large as the State of New York. They do not take a census here; and estimates from the best information that could be obtained make the population five millions, which is less than that of the State of New York. Mr. Gaskette has colored a strip of it along the Red Sea, about a hundred miles wide, in green, as he has Palestine and the other parts of Turkey in Asia shown before you. A large portion of Arabia consists of deserts, the principal of which is the Syrian in the north.
"Ptolemy, not the king but the geographer, divided Arabia into three sections,--Arabia Petræa, after the city of Petra; Arabia Deserta, the interior; and Arabia Felix (Arabie Heureuse in French), which does not mean 'the happy land,' as generally translated. Milton says, 'Sabean odors from the spicy shores of Araby the blest.' The words meant the land lying to the right, or south of Mecca, the Oriental principal point of the compass being the east and not the north.
"The proper divisions at the present time are the Sinai peninsula, Hedjaz, which is the northern part of the green strip; Yemen, the south part (formerly Arabia Felix); Hadramaut, which borders the Arabian Gulf, the ante-sea of the Red; and Oman, a mountainous region at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, an independent country, under the government of the sultan or imam of Muscat, as the territory is also called.