On the one side it has Egypt, on the other Palestine, Syria, Babylon, Chaldea; and the Divine Creator has given it the patient and unwearied camel, the ship of the desert, to cross the ocean of sand which divides it from those countries.
On the east lies the Gulf of Persia, which, by the river Euphrates, reaches the heart of Western Asia; while the island of Ormus forms a stepping-stone from its coast to that of India.
On the west the Red Sea protects it from the invasion of the Ethiopian nations; placing it in communication with Egypt and Abyssinia: while on the south the continent of Africa, at the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, visibly invites the natives of Arabia to visit its coasts.
Thus it is protected by a desert of sand, for the crossing of which there is an animal specially provided on the one side; and on two others by the ocean, which along six hundred miles of its coast invites the enterprise of its inhabitants to search for richer lands.
By its proximity to Africa, from which it is visible, the western shore of the Indian Ocean became known to the Arabs at an early date, with all its gold, pearls, precious stones, and valuable woods and spices; and, by way of the Persian Gulf, these first pioneers of commerce found a route to its eastern shores, and likewise formed colonies in Western India.
When we remember that the Arabs were the first astronomers, it is natural to suppose that these early observers of the heavens had, from the south of Arabia, remarked that the wind blew from one quarter half the year, and from the opposite for the remainder; and thus had been acquainted with the regularity of the monsoons for ages before this wonderful phenomenon of nature dawned upon the mind of the Greek philosopher and mariner, Hippalus.
The knowledge of this remarkable fact would enable them to put to sea with confidence, in search of the Arabian colonies already formed in India and Africa.
From the former country did they obtain a knowledge of the needle which points ever to the pole? This is probable, for the inhabitants of China were acquainted with the mariner’s compass ages before Flavio Gioia of Amalfi gave it to guide the wonderful discoveries of the European era of conquest; and from the remotest antiquity China had commercial relations with India.