The Monticellonian., 1918-12-13

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 a 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 Il 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, 1t would seem. The natives will tell you that certain sections are impossible. Some of this may be taken with a trife of reserve, for willy desert merchants have been known to spread horrifying reports as to the fatal characteristics of this section OF that-that the very air is poisoned-thereby frightening away thieving tradesmen from the right of way of well-Iaden caravans.
 Land of Romance and Ruin.
 The Persian side shows a rugged beach formation with bristling cliffs and rocks. There lie Bushire and Bas- ra-from this latter Sindbad, histor- ical character, sailed on his never-to- be-forgotten voyages. To the interior lie Shiraz and Ispahan, of poetico- romantic glory. It 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 0rmuz 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 it's 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- tions 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 married by robbers and fractious 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 harrow northern shore of the Persian gulf lies the ancient land of the Chaldeans. It is here that the sto- ried rivers, the Euphrates and the IT. gris, 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- heath 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.