[Footnote 31:  “Intactis opulentior thesauris Arabum.” —­Horat.  Od. iii. 24.  Pliny (Hist.  Nat. vi. 32) more soberly endeavours to prove the enormous accumulation of wealth which must have taken place in Arabia, from the constant influx of the precious metals for the purchase of their spices and other commodities, while they bought none of the productions of other countries in return.]

These golden dreams speedily vanished as the country became more extensively known:  and though the Arab tribes of the desert between Syria and the Euphrates acknowledged a nominal subjection to Rome, the intercourse of the Imperial City with Yemen, or Arabia Felix, was confined to the trade which was carried on over the Red Sea from Egypt, and which became the channel through which not only the spices of Arabia, but the rich products of India, and even the slaves [32] and ivory of Eastern Africa, were supplied to the markets of Italy.  At the present day, almost the whole of the south coast of Arabia fronting the Indian Ocean, nearly from the head of the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, as well as the eastern coast of Africa, from Cape Guardafui to the entrance of the Mozambique Channel a seaboard approaching 4000 miles in length—­is more or less subject to the Sultan of Muscat, [33] a prince whose power is almost wholly maritime, and whose dominions nowhere extend more than thirty or forty miles inland:  while our own recent acquisition of Aden, a detached point with which our communication can be maintained only by restraining the command of the sea, has for the first time given an European power (excepting the Turks, whose possessions in Arabia always depended on Egypt) a locus standi on the shores of Yemen.

[Footnote 32:  This part of Africa is noticed by Arrian as famous for the excellent quality of the slaves brought from [Greek:  ta doulicha chreissota],and it still retains its pre-eminence.  The tribes in this quarter are far superior both in personal appearance and intellect to the negroes of Guinea.]

[Footnote 33:  We have seen it somewhere stated that the Sultan has also attempted, by means of his navy, to exercise authority on the shores of Beloochistan; which would bring him into contact with our own outposts at Soumeeani, &c., near the mouth of the Indus.]

The process by which we obtained this footing in Arabia was strictly in accordance with the maxims of policy adopted by the then rulers of British India, and which they were at the same time engaged in carrying out, on a far more extended scale, in Affghanistan.  In both cases—­perhaps from a benevolent anxiety to accommodate our diplomacy to the primitive ideas of those with whom we had to deal—­