This division of the _sandy_, the _stony_, and the _happy_, so familiar to the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient geography.

The maritime districts of _Bahrein_ and _Oman_ are opposite to the realm of Persia.

The kingdom of _Yemen_ displays the limits, or at least the situation, of Arabia Felix: the name of _Neged_ is extended over the inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of _Hejaz_ along the coast of the Red Sea.
The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence; and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industrious province.

Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the _Icthyophagi_, or fish eaters, continued to wander in quest of their precarious food.
In this primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Generations and ages might roll away in silent oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow margin of the seacoast.

But in an early period of antiquity the great body of the Arabs had emerged from this scene of misery; and as the naked wilderness could not maintain a people of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and plentiful condition of the pastoral life.