Among the most intelligent and enterprising of these officers was the late Lieut. Wellsted, who thus describes his reflections on joining the expedition in the Red Sea, on the 12th October, 1830. "From the earliest dawn of history, the northern shores of the Red Sea have figured as the scene of events which both religious and civil records have united to render memorable. Here Moses and the Patriarchs tended their flocks, and put in motion those springs of civilization, which, from that period, have never ceased to urge forward the whole human race in the career of improvement. On the one hand the Valley of the Wanderings, commencing near the site of Memphis, and opening upon the Red Sea, conducts the fancy along the track pursued by the Hebrews during their flight out of Egypt; on the other hand are Mount Sinai, bearing still upon its face the impress of miraculous events, and beyond it that strange, stormy, and gloomy-looking sea, once frequented by Phœnician merchants' ships, by the fleets of Solomon and Pharaoh, and those barks of later times which bore the incenses, the gems, the gold and spices of the East, to be consumed or lavishly squandered upon favorites at the courts of Macedonia or Rome. But the countries lying along this offshoot of the Indian Ocean, have another kind of interest, peculiar perhaps to themselves. On the Arabian side we find society much what it was four thousand years ago; for amidst the children of Ishmael it has undergone but trifling modifications. Their tents are neither better nor worse than they were when they purchased Joseph of his brethren, on their way to Egypt; the Sheikhs possess no other power or influence than they enjoyed then; the relations of the sexes have suffered little or no changes; they eat, drink, clothe themselves, educate their children, make war and peace, just as they did in the day of the Exodus. But on the opposite shores, all has been change, fluctuation, and decay. While the Bedouins have wandered with their camels and their flocks, unaspiring, unimproving, they have looked across the gulf and beheld the Egyptian overthrown by the Persian, the Persian by the Greek, the Greek by the Roman, and the Roman in his turn by a daring band from their own burning deserts. They have seen empires grow up like Jonah's gourd. War has swept away some; the varieties and luxuries of peace have brought others to the ground; and every spot along these shores is celebrated."
When the northeastern and the western shores of the Arabian peninsula had thus been investigated, there still remained to be explored the south eastern shore, the coast of the anciently renowned province of Hadramaut, extending from Tehama, on the Red Sea, to the province of Oman, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf; and it is to the discoveries made in this almost unknown part of the world that I now wish more particularly to allude.
In the year 1839 Capt. Haines, the commander of the expedition and the present governor of Aden, published his survey of about two fifths of this coast, extending from the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb as far east as Missenaat, in long. 51° east of Greenwich.[63] In the year 1845, he published his further survey of about an equal portion extending to Cape Isolette, in long. 57° 51', leaving about one fifth of the whole extent on the eastern end still to be explored.[64]
In June, 1843, Adolphe Baron Wrede, a Hanoverian gentleman, made an excursion from Makallah on the coast, into the interior of the country. He visited among other places an extensive valley called Wadi Doan, which he thus describes. "The sudden appearance of the Wadi Doan, took me by surprise and impressed me much with the grandeur of the scene. The ravine, five hundred feet wide and six hundred feet in depth, is enclosed between perpendicular rocks, the debris of which form in one part a slope reaching to half their height. On this slope, towns and villages rise contiguously in the form of an amphitheatre; while below the date grounds, which are covered with a forest of trees, the river about twenty feet broad and enclosed by high and walled embankments is seen winding through fields laid out in terraces, then pursuing its course in the open plain, irrigated by small canals branching from it. My first view of the valley disclosed to me four towns and four villages, within the space of an hour's distance." He also gives an account of some curious spots of quicksand, in the midst of the great desert of El-Akkaf, which are regarded with superstitious horror by the wandering Bedouins. A cord of sixty fathoms in length with a plummet at the end, which he cast into one of them, disappeared in the course of five minutes. His narrative is published in the fourteenth volume of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.
In spite of the glowing descriptions of ancient authors, the idea hitherto entertained of this region in modern times, has been that of a succession of desert plains and sand-hills, with nothing to give animation to the arid scene but solitary groups of Bedouins and occasionally a passing caravan. The recent explorations, however, of which the one just quoted is a specimen, show that this is far from being a correct view of the entire country. The coast is thickly studded with fishing-villages and small seaports, which still carry on, though on a diminished scale, the trade with India and the Persian gulf, which has existed ever since the dawn of history. It is true, the general appearance of the country along the coast, consisting as it does of successive ranges of sand-hills, is such as to naturally give rise to the views entertained and promulgated by navigators, who have had no opportunity of visiting the interior. But the deeper researches that have been made during the last ten or twelve years, show that these opinions are very erroneous; for besides that there are a number of green valleys running down to the coast, produced by streams provided with water for at least a good part of the year, no sooner has the traveller surmounted the first range of sand-hills, than his sight begins to be regaled with numerous well watered valleys and mountains covered with verdure. Besides this, even in those parts of the country where the surface is naturally a desert plain, the inhabitants have possessed from the remotest times the art of forming flourishing oases, in which to establish their hamlets and towns; an operation which, as Wellsted remarks, is effected with a labor and skill that seem more Chinese than Arabian. This traveller says: "The greater part of the face of the country being destitute of running streams on the surface, the Arabs have sought in elevated places for springs or fountains beneath it. A channel from this fountain-head is then, with a very slight descent, bored in the direction in which it is to be conveyed, leaving apertures at regular distances, to afford light and air to those who are occasionally sent to keep it clean. In this manner water is frequently conducted from a distance of six or eight miles, and an unlimited supply is thus obtained. These channels are usually about four feet broad and two feet deep, and contain a clear and rapid stream. Few of the large towns or oases but had four or five of these rivulets or feleji running into them. The isolated spots to which water is thus conveyed possess a soil so fertile, that nearly every grain, fruit, or vegetable, common to India, Arabia, or Persia, is produced almost spontaneously; and the tales of the oases will be no longer regarded as an exaggeration, since a single step conveys the traveller from the glare and sand of the desert into a fertile tract, watered by a hundred rills, teeming with the most luxuriant vegetation, and embowered by lofty and stately trees, whose umbrageous foliage the fiercest rays of a noontide sun cannot penetrate."[65]
These oases and the towns situated in them, date from various periods; some of those already discovered being evidently of considerable antiquity. In describing some of these towns, Wellsted says: "The instant you step from the Desert within the Grove, a most sensible change of the atmosphere is experienced. The air feels cold and damp; the ground in every direction is saturated with moisture; and from the density of the shade, the whole appears dark and gloomy. To avoid the damp and catch an occasional beam of the sun above the trees, the houses are usually very lofty. A parapet encircling the upper part is turreted; and on some of the largest houses guns are mounted. The windows and doors have the Saracenic arch; and every part of the building is profusely decorated with ornaments of stucco in bas relief, some in very good taste. The doors are also cased with brass, and have rings and other massive ornaments of the same metal." These descriptions relate to the province of Oman, the eastern extremity of Southern Arabia. The glimpses already obtained of this ancient and famous land, sufficiently prove that the fortunate traveller who shall succeed in obtaining access into the interior of the country, which has always been a terra incognita to Europeans and their descendants, will find an abundance of objects of interest to reward his zeal and self-devotion.
There is however another class of interesting objects, relating to the ancient history of the country, which I have not alluded to until now, because I wish to speak of them more particularly. These are the ancient inscriptions, of which a number have already been discovered and in part decyphered.
Several Arabian writers have stated that there existed in the southern part of their country, before the time of Mohammed, a kind of writing which they call Himyaritic, after the name of the ancient inhabitants of the country, the Beni Himyar. But the confused nature of these accounts, together with the Arab practice of giving the name of Himyaritic to every ancient mode of writing which they were unable to read, caused the story to be regarded as little better than fabulous. In the year 1808 the late Baron de Sacy published a learned treatise on the subject, in which he collected all the Arabian accounts; but no further progress was made in the enquiry, until the discovery of a number of inscriptions on various massy ruins situated along the coast and in the interior, by officers attached to the surveying expedition already spoken of, in the years 1834 and '5.
Copies of these inscriptions were transmitted to the late Dr. Gesenius of Halle, one of the first Orientalists of Europe. After making some progress in the investigation, he gave up the subject to his colleague Dr. Rödiger, who had devoted himself to it with great ardor and success. The latter published a copious dissertation containing the results he had arrived at, which he reprinted in 1842 by way of an appendix to his German edition of Wellsted's Travels in Arabia. By comparing the characters of the inscriptions with the Himyaritic alphabets contained in some Arabic manuscripts and with the present Ethiopic alphabet, he was enabled to ascertain the powers of the letters, and even to interpret, with various degrees of certainty, many portions of the inscriptions themselves. Thus, these venerable records, which in all probability have for many ages been dumb to every human being, are in a fair way of being made to yield up to modern scientific research whatever information they may contain. That this information must be interesting and valuable to the historian is inferred from the imposing nature of the structures on which they are found, and whose existence but a few years ago was as little looked for in this part of the world as in the forest wilds of Oregon. A full account of these discoveries and of the attempts at decyphering the inscriptions was published in 1845 in the first volume of the Transactions of the Ethnological Society of this city. I will therefore merely proceed to state what has been accomplished in the matter since the time when that account closes.
In the beginning of 1843, the same year in which M. Wrede made his exploration, a French physician of the name of Arnaud being then at Jiddah, received from M. Fresnel, the French consular agent at that port, accounts of the Himyaritic inscriptions discovered by the officers of the Indian Navy, and of the interest they had created in Europe. M. Arnaud's enthusiasm being excited on the subject, he resolved to take a share in these arduous researches. The grand object of his ambition was to reach Mareb, the ancient capital of Hadramaut and the residence of the famous Queen of Sheba, whose name according to the Arabians was Balkis. Two English officers had undertaken the journey several years ago, and had reached Sana, a town within three or four days' journey of it; but the suspicions of the native authorities becoming excited, their further progress was prevented.