'The Penetration of Arabia a record of the development of Western knowledge concerning the Arabian Peninsula with illustrations from drawings, photographs, and maps by J. G. Bartholomew.' [‎12] (39/496)

ARABIA
daily at Gerra, habitually despatched their wares to
Petra overland. The ocean trade with Somaliland and
further Africa, with India and with Ceylon, remained
long in the hands of the Yemen and Hadramaut Arabs;
and southwest Arabia was still, at the Christian era,
the paramount emporium of those precious stones and
metals, gums and spices, which represented to the
ancient world the last word of fastidious luxury. The
fame of Araby the Blest spread far and wide, till it
awoke the cupidity of Rome. The Arabs of that day,
like other Semites since, were regarded as the blood
suckers of the west, and public opinion supported
Augustus in his resolve to investigate their rich land,
and, if need were, to lay hands on their trade and their
hoards of gold.
Under the command of iElius Callus, Eparch of
Egypt, who perhaps himself advised the venture, the
Emperor sent the first, and indeed the last, considerable
military force that a European power has ever de
spatched to the conquest of inland Arabia. Once more
we have to thank Strabo, a friend of the leader, for an
account of this expedition. . After wasting time and
money on building a war fleet. Callus set sail from
Suez, and was directed by the Nabathaean emir, with
whom his plan had been concerted, towards a port,
Levke, on the eastern coast of the Red Sea. Long
delay and much sickness ensued in the pestilential
Tehama air, as at the outset of the next Egyptian
expedition, that of Tussun Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. in 1811; and there
after a toilsome march was made through ill-watered