Middletown transcript. [volume] (Middletown, Del.) 1868-current, 1918-12-14

robberies and piracies of the natives,
which in spite of English gunbOats
flourish exceedingly. Slave trading
and gun running are lucrative profes.
sions, and the warriors of central Asia
are enabled to make large amounts of
trouble, thanks to the rifles placed in
their hands by these hardy rascals OF
the gulf littoral.
All along the sandy waste lie treas
ure stores Of ruins. Travellers have
described half-buried stone formations.
the relics of man long before the early
civilization Of the region. There is Il
resemblance to the famous stone age
work at Stonehenge and other remains
Of prehistoric man in Europe. South.
ern Arabia holds the remains of what
seems very early and quite unknown
civilization. Excavation may add a
new and revolutionary page to the his
tory of culture.
Large parts of Arabia have never
been explored by the outsider, some
not even by the Arabs themselves, it
would seem. The natives will tell you
that certain sections are impossible.
Some of this may be taken with trifle
Of reserve, for willy desert merchants
have been known to spread horrifying
reports as to the fatal characteristics
of this section or that-that the very
air is Extraordinarily frightening
away thieving tradesmen from the
right Of way of well-laden caravans.
Land Of Romance and Ruin.
The Persian side shows rugged
beach formation with bristling cliffs
and rocks. There lie Bushire and Bas-
ra-from this latter Sindbad, a histor-
ical character, sailed on his never-to-
be-fOrgotten voyages. To the interior
lie Shiraz and Ispahan, of poetico-
romantic glory. 1t is land as strange
as Araby itself. Take the punishment
Of slaves. When a slave has misbe-
haved himself seriously enough he is
punished by being freed and left to
earn his own living, which virtually
consigns him to lingering death.
Across the Straits Of Ormuz, OppO-
site the tip of the Pirate coast, is the
once great trading city of Ormuz, now
a ruin, showing evidences of vanished
magnificence. Western travellers who
visited the city in the days of its splen-
dor five hundred years ago used ex-
travagant language in describing the
wealth and luxury which prevailed
there. But Ormuz after undergoing
spectacular ups and downs finally de-
cayed and fell into dust, and is now
an object for the philosophic rumina-
tons Of the tourist, cadaver for the
dissecting picks and shovels of the
archeOlOgist.
There are few ports on this rough
coast and the interior is harried by
robbers and fractions tribesmen. There
are sites and cities untouched by the
ravages of tourists, although they have
been drummed into the head of the
western world by the great Persian
poets in their latter-day occidental
vogue.
At the narrow northern shore of the
Persian gulf lies the ancient land Of
the Chaldeans. 1t is here that the stO-
ried rivers, the Euphrates and the IL
girls, unite and flow into the gulf.
On the Tigris is Bagdad the city
Of the Arabian Nights. The ruins of
Babylon are near the Euphrates; the
rivers run almost parallel. On every
side, on the sands, or more often be-
meath Them. are the decayed remnants
of days which stir the Imagination of
the dullest. Persia, Chaldea. Arabia
all clustered about the gulf-and the
tourist found them not.