to both of which it lay,—­it seems to have been governed by princes of its own, who were partly independent, and partly under the influence of the monarchs of Syria and Egypt.  About sixty-three years before Christ, Pompey took Petra; and, from that period, the sovereigns of Idumea were tributary to the Romans.  This city, however, still retained its commerce, and was in a flourishing condition, as we are informed by Strabo, on the authority of his friend Athenedorus, who visited it about thirty-six years after it.  He describes it as built on a rock, distinguished, however, from all the rocks in that part of Arabia, from being supplied with an abundant spring of water.  Its natural position, as well as art, rendered it a fortress of importance in the desert.  He represents the people as rich, civilized, and peaceable; the government as regal, but the chief power as lodged in a minister selected by the king, who had the title of the king’s brother.  Syllaeus, who betrayed Elius Gallus, appears to have been a minister of this description.

The next mention that occurs of the trade of Petra is in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, the date of which, though uncertain, there is good reason to fix in Nero’s reign.  According to this work, Leuke Kome, at the mouth of the Elanitic Gulf, was the point of communication with Petra, the capital of the country, the residence of Malachus, the king of the Nabathians.  “Leuke Kome, itself, had the rank of a mart in respect to the small vessels which obtained their cargoes in Arabia, for which reason there was a garrison placed in it, under the command of a centurion, both for the purpose of protection, and in order to collect a duty of twenty-five in the hundred.”  In the reign of Trajan, Idumea was reduced into the form of a Roman province, by one of his generals; after this time it not does fall within our plan to notice it, except merely to state, that its subjection does not seem to have been complete or permanent, for during the latter empire, there were certainly sovereigns of this part of Arabia, in some degree independent, whose influence and alliance were courted by the Romans and Persians, whenever a war was about to commence between these two powers.

From this sketch of the trade of the Arabians from the earliest period, we may conclude, in the first place, that when navigation was in its infancy, it was confined, or almost entirely so, to a land trade carried on by caravans; and that Petra was the centre to which these caravans tended from the east and the south, bringing with them from the former the commodities of India, and from the latter the commodities of the more fertile part of Arabia.  From Petra, all these goods were again transported by land to the shores of the Mediterranean and to Egypt.  In the second place, when navigation became more commonly known and practised, (and there is good reason to believe that it was known and practised among the Arabians, especially those near the Persian Gulf, at a very early