The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1891-01-01

naCaon, says the traveller, Burkhardt,
who visited every part of the peninsula,
sis the dignified bearing of their poor
and the vivacity of their old men. Pa
triarchs of sixty or seventy years will
enter with unaffected pleasure into the
spirit of the liveliest conversation; will
handy repartees with precocious
youngster, or shake with laughter at
the recital of a practical joke. So uni
versal is that disposition among the
graybeards both of the well-to-do class
es and of the poorest, that can not
help thinking the lack of mental buoy.
ance among the aged persons of our
own nation must be due to some cause
besides the depressing influence of long
continued drudgery.''
Can there be much doubt that that
''other cause" is the lethargizing after
effect of habitual intoxication? Wine
and brandy stimulate or rather irritate,
but eventually blunt the mental ener-
gies, and the Arabs escape that
caus. of vital exhaustion in spite OF
their torrid climate, and in spite OF
their rather far-going habit of early
marriage. In the nomad camps OF
Yemen, boys of twelve years are fire.
quently married to girls of ten. and
young fellows of twenty may thus be
burdened with all the cares of respon.
sibiity for the support of numerous
family, for polygamy, too, is practiced
now and then. War, fearful droughts
and famine add their share to the sor.
rows of existence, but Temperance.
steeled health bears up against all that
and an Arab sheik at eighty years is,
to all purposes, younger than French
Marquis at fifty. Wrestling-matches,
and horse races are amusements shared
by all the adult males of an Arab tribe,
with the exception of cripples, sickness
being so rare that it is almost limited
to indigestions contracted by the eating
of unwhOlesome substances in time OF
famine. On the fight before pursu-
ing enemy the Arabs of the desert
brave with impunity almost indescrib-
able fatigues, thinking nothing of be-
striding trotting dromedary for TWEEN
ty consecutive hours, or of travelling for
days in the teeth of binding sand
storm.
Nor does poverty daunt the spirit of
that plucky race. 1.-THE natives of
Araby have no proletariate," saws
Baron Won Wrede; mo lower classes in
our uncomfortable sense of the word.
The poorest tiller of the soil maintains
his dignity as man, declines to cringe
before superior wealth or power, and
never loses sight of the rules of decorum
In the presence of a guest. The
wealthy sheiks of Hadramant. with
all their overbearing treatment of
mental foreigners, at once drop their
hectorlng manner on approaching a
fellow countryman. They know that
negro will put up with kicks for the
sake of bread, and Frankish peddler
with taunts for the sake of profit; but
they also know that the self-respect of
an Arab is poverty proof
In the pursuit of science Arabia has
remained behind the countries of the
civilized North, but in land of deserts
the development of educational institu-
tions is hardly fair test of mental en-
ergy. Science, like art, is more or less
product of leisure which again presup-
poses a surplus of wealth. In their
prosperous colonies, in Syria, Northern
Hindostan and Egypt, the Arabs cult
waited science with zeal not surpassed
by any nation of classic antiquity, or by
the Greeks alone, and during the long
night of the Middle Ages the Arab por-
ton of Spain was an intellectual
Goshen, strangely contrasting with the
barbarism and the gross ignorance of
the surrounding countries. During the
long period from the end of the eighth
to the middle of the thirteenth century,
when every sovereign of Christian Spain
was at daggers drawn with his Moorish
neighbors, the fame of the Moslem
high schools frequently induced Chris
tan noblemen to send their sons to Cor
dova and Toledo, and history records
the name of more than one North Span
ish monarch who obtained safe conduct
for his own person or near relative in
order to consult a Moorish physician of
international ia. lie. If it were
not for the culture of Arab Spain.
one might, indeed, often be tempted to
doubt the progress of mankind during
the thousand years interval from the
downfall of Rome to the discovery of
America, but even the chronicles of
hostile historians make it probable that
the kingdom of the Cordova Calits was
in several essential respects more civ
tlized country than the Empire of the
Roman Caesars. Industry and aRricult-
ure fourished in the valley Of the
Guadalquivir as they never flourished
anywhere in Italy or Greece: medicine
astronomy, geography and mathematics
reached q summit then attained for the
first time in the history of science, and
the culture Of the magnificent Moorish
cities was not defiled by orgies>of vice
and intemperance. Their kingdom per
ished, but they can boast that under
their. rule the Spanish peninsula en-.
joyed degree Of prosperity not
equalled before or after; and the same
claim might be justly advanced by the
Arabian colonists Of large portions Of
Das3erD A6iss and Central As,a, Eirht