Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎5r] (9/42)

Palgrave's Arabia,
187
All of these provinces or principalities—they have some
times been the one and sometimes the other—have been visited
and described by men specially qualified to give an account of
them, and who have left for their successors but little important
information to glean on their tracks. Earliest in date was
Niebuhr, who, besides a great amount of general information
regarding Arabia and the Arabs, has also given us a full and
accurate account of Yemen, the Arabia Felix of the ancients.
His work bears everywhere the impress of superior intellect,
careful observation and inquiry, calm judgment, and good faith.
Of the Hejaz and its cities we have from Burckhardt a description
such as Gibbon desiderated, and no other European had been
able to give. It leaves little that is new to be told by any tra
veller who may follow him in the Hejaz, But his inquiries
were not confined to that province; he collected detailed infor
mation regarding the routes from Mekka and Medina to different
parts, indeed to almost all parts, of Arabia. Of the pestilential
Hadramaut, which, being interpreted, is the region of death,
we know little, and probably there is not much to be known,
beyond the harbours and villages on the coast described by
Wellsted, whose modest narrative, distinguished by its scrupulous
accuracy and fidelity, has hardly secured to him the position to
which, amongst recent travellers, he is entitled. It is true that
in his travels in Oman he had advantages such as no other tra
veller in the interior of Arabia has enjoyed, for he travelled with
the concurrence and under the protection of the Imam of Muscat,
the sovereign of the country. Probably that is one of the reasons
why his account of the interior of Oman is still the most accurate
that we possess of the topography and condition of any inland
portion of Arabia of similar extent. With the districts on the
shores of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , from Cape Massendom to the mouths
of the Euphrates, the surveys of the Indian navy, the intercourse
of their chiefs and merchants with the British Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. at
Bussora, which was for some time established at Grane, as well
as with the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. at Bushire, and the military expeditions
which had been sent from India to chastise the pirates of that
coast, and destroy their vessels and strongholds, had made us
well acquainted.
There remained in the central part of the peninsula, or rather
of its isthmus, the great province of Nejd,^ or the Highlands,
which was known to be populous and productive, but which no
European had yet examined. In a note appended to his pub-
* Mr. Palgrave writes Nejed ; Burckhardt, Nedjed; in Eastern Arabia we believe
tbe word is never pronounced as if it consisted of two syllables^ ,
lished