ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

Otago Witness, Issue 663, 12 August 1864, Page 20

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

(&om "Bell's Weekly Me^en^er," Feb. 27.)

Aw Advehtukous Jotjeney.

On Monday evening a crowded meeting <of this society was held at Burlington House, the President (Sir R. I. Murchison) in the chair, to listen to the narrative of a most adventurous journey by Mr Gifford Falgrave (son of the late Sir Francis Palgrare) from Gaza, in Southern Syria, across North Central Arabia, in nearly a ■diagonal line, to El Khatif, on the Persian <Julf (passing by the capital of the Wahafoite Monarchy), and hence to the littleknown kingdom of Oman, at the extreme corner of Arabia. The paper itself contained little beyond the skeleton, as its accomplished author termed it, of what had foeen actually achieved ; but even in this «rude form it treated of scenes and countries respecting which so little is known, and that little almost uniformly erroneous, that it deserves particular notice. Disguises had to be prepared at Gaza, as so great is the jealousy of the Arabs, beth nomad and stationary, of all Europeans, even including the Turks, that instances are by no means uncommon of euch travellers having been put to death Mr Palgrave travelled as a wandering doctor ; in other words he was viewed by jmany of those he encountered as a quack •who had committed some civil crime in Ms native Damascus, and had fled into Arabia. This character, which he took no pains to disclaim, united with a certain amount of real medical knowledge, proved *)f great service to him, as it not only brought him in contact with all classes of society, but attracted to his ministration, rfor physical ailments, numbers of persons who' resided eight, ten, and even twelve ■days' journey distant, and from these he ■derived valuable information as to the route he should adopt to avoid political .•embroilments, rising in some localities to the dignity of revolutions, Mr Paligrave apologised for his having become unfamiliar with his mother tongue (though no one would have remarked it, save, 'perhaps, in his accent), having been .-eighteen years absent from England, and accustomed for many yeara past to converse in nothing but Arabic. On leaving Gaza "the desert is at once encountered, and the ."frontier of the kingdom of DjebelSchonur, the most northerly division of Arabia, is reaihed at Mann. Hence they ■pushed eastward over another desert seven days' journey, with but one well, and in ,'the midst of which they had nearly perished in a simoon. They had now Teached the Jauff, a centre of some trade, lying in the jaws of the Wady Serham, down which their route had lain, the road "being commanded by an old fort. They next proceeded southward to Hail, the .capital of Djebel-Schonur, a city of "20,000 inhabitants, near the southern frontier of the kingdom. They had now reached the great central pla- j -teau of Arabia, and entered the renowned kingdom of the Wahabites. The title usually adopted by the Monarch, at present represented by Ibu Saud, is " Sultan of the Nedjed." At Riadh (the modern ,<capital, the better known Derayen, half a day's journey distant, having been destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha) the party remained seven weeks, when they found it advisable to effect their escape in secret, after some little trouble and danger, i reached El Khatif. Here Mr Palgrave's companion was detached to Bagdad, lest the valuable results obtained by their -joint labors might be lost in the event of both iacing the still greater perils of a journey 'to the piratical coast of Oman. This latter adventure Mr Palgrave achieved alone, narrowly escaping from death in a shipwreck, where, out of a party of twentyone but nine survived . He was kindly treated ,by the potentate known to us by the title of Imaum of Muscat, which Mr Palgrave assures us is an entire misnomer, his title being " Sultan of Oman," and his capital •Shohar, a little to the north-west of Mus«cat, the latter being merely the chief trading emporium of the country. From this point, after three mouths of solitary travel, he rejoined his companion at Bagdad, no vrorA. of his movements having reached any •of his friends for eleven months.

In reply to the request of the President,

Mr Palgrave proceeded to give a most interesting and graphic account of the manners and political and religious peculiarities of the various tribes he encountered, besides narrating with much humor the straits in which he found himself -owing to the cupidity of the Wababite Sovereign, in his thirst after .forbidden 'knowledge. He first of all dispelled the illusion which seems to prevail which identifies the wandering Bedouin with the Arab proper, and con-iders the entire peninsula as given over to a nomad race inhabiting tents. The Bedouins, he said, encircle, as it were, the more settled central kingdom, in which occurred forms of society as firmly established, and as strongly marked in their way, as any in more civilised countries. Some of the cities were inhabited by as many as 20.000 inhabitants and upwards, and there were not only

shops, bazaars, and mosques, but houses of two and three storeys, displaying occasionally a degree of taste which he feared few streets in London could aspire to. As to their tolerance of other religious, it was well known that hospitality is an Arab virtue, but he was hardly prepared to find that the fact of his being a Christian, of which he made no secret, never subjected him to the slightest insult or inconvenience. A very much more Berious annoyance arose from the extreme severity of the Wahabite code of Mtshoraedanism. The founder of this sect, Ibn Abd-el-Wahab, who was born about a century since at the beautiful town of Hormeilemeh (through which Mr Palgrave passed), revived the Mahomedan precepts in all their pristine strictness, so that anyone desirous of understanding what Islamism resembled in its palmy days of early enthusiasm could not do better than visit Riadh. His followers are divided into mollahs, or spiritual guides, who have nothing but learning and devotion to recommend them, and the great body of the people, who are governed by an hereditary despotism, perhaps the strictest and most extraordinary of any recorded in history. So rigorously are the precepts of the Koran observed that a debasing fatalism supplies the place of all religion, of which Mr Palgrave cited some ludicrous examples. Moreover, there is to Western notions the most grotesque disproportion in the classification of great and little sins. Such sins as murder, robbery, and the like, are those of which Providence reserves the condign punishment to itself, whereupon " Alia ku KherimV (Goil is mecrifull) is the consolation that the faithful believer mutters to account for the culprit escaping his just doom. On the other hand, the most deadly and abominable of all sins is tobacco smoking — "drinking the shameful," as it is termed by the horror stricken Wahabite. Though Mr Palgrave was known to indulge occasionally in this nefarious practice, he was not molested, and might have remained much longer had. he not, unfortunately, successfully treated an attack of paralysis of the lingual nerve in a patient by the application externally of an infinitesimal quantity of strychnine. The fame of this wonderful cure reached the Royal ears, and. his Majesty thereupon redoubled I the attentions he had hitherto lavished on the wonderful Syrian doctor, with the view of obtaining some of the wonderworking powder. This was refused on the plea of the danger of its use in un- 1 practised hands, when the Monarch speedily let drop a hint that such a quality only made it the more precious in his eyes as an instrument for carrying out State ends. After a scene, in which Mr Palgrave was only saved from destruction by his firmness in refusing to become an accomplice in political assassination, he made his escape a day or two later, during the long evening prayers; and, aa already mentioned, reached El Khatif, buried among its roses. Before leaving the Wahabite capital, however, he had been called in to doctor one of the Royal horses, which gave him an opportunity of seeing the renowned stables of the Wahabite King, where is, of course, to be seen the pick of the celebrated breed of Nedjed, the finest of all descriptions of Arab horses. Mr Palgrave stated that almost all Arab horses now imported come from North Arabia, Egypt, or South Syria, and that such a thing as exporting a Nedjed steed was absolutely impossible. They were chiefly a clear grey or light chesnut (bay being a color that never occurred), with occasionally white, black, and deep chesuut. Dapples, piebalds, skewbalds, and roans, were equally unknown, and the peculiar obliquity of the shoulder blade gave them an easy, springy motion, which, combined with their splen- ! did barrel, immense haunches, superbly- j set tail, delicate muzzle, and magnificent ' crest, made them the beau ideal of the horse, though rarely standing over fifteen hands— a horse of sixteen hands being utterly unknown. Oman, which he next visited, he described as by far the most j beautiful portion of Arabia, resembling India in climate, as also in physical geo • i graphy, a line of mountains analae;ou3 to the Western Ghauts, but apparently as high as Lebanon, running down the Arabian Sea from Ras Mussendom to below Muscat. The Sultan (or Iraaum) received them very hospitably. Much of the peculiarity of the natives of Oman is undoubtedly due to their being entirely cut off from the rest of Arabia by vast deserts. The nominal state religion all over Arabia is, of course, Islamism, but except in the large towns it is anything but obtrusive, and is usually intermingled with superstitious observances, strongly suggestive of a lingering trace of the old Sabsean worship of the sun, such as is known to have existed before Mahomed drove out Paganism. Thus, in Northern Arabia the people prayed as the first rays of the sun rose above the horizon, and so continued till his whole disc was clear, and again in the evening (reversing the order, of course), a ritual which is stringently

prohibited by the Koran, as the sun is supposed to rise and set between the horns of Eblis, to whom, therefore, all prayers performed as above are supposed to be addressed. Again, in Oman, he found that the people were in the habit of praying, not to the aun at east or west, but with their faces to the north, and on inquiry he learned, to hia surprise, that the name they applied to the north star was that very same mysterious title Jab, assumed to himself by the Almighty in the book of Exodus. This he was inclined to attribute to the idea of fixity which, in their ignorance of astronomy, they would probably attribute to the only star that seemed to them always to occupy the same place. In conclusion, he would remark that all anti-Islamitic nations were always to he found in the East nestled among the mountains.

The President, aa soon as the applause had subsided, said that never since he had belonged to the society had he listened to a more varied and eloquent narrative than that of the distinguished traveller who had just addressed them, whose extraordinary experiences, coupled with the glimpses he had afforded them of the inner life of these primitive fanatics, he could only compare to the thousand and second Arabian night, with this difference, that Mr Palgrave had utilised his travels in Arabia to a degree that rendered him a benefacter to science. He would not, however, detain the meeting by his own comments, but would invite Sir Henry Rawlinson to make a few remarks.

Sir Henry Rawlinson said that though others, such as Sadlier (who was labelled and receipted on his journey like a bale of goods) and Dr. Wallin, as also three doctors of the late East India Company, in 1837, had crossed Arabia, yet he concurred in what had fallen from the President as to this paper being by far the most important contribution that had been made to our knowledge of Arabia interior. He had heard during his many years' residence at Bagdad of the existence of fire-worship in various parts of Arabia, but with regard to the peculiar and unmistakable form of it prevalent in Oman, he wag inclined to attribute it to the proximity of the opposite coast of Persia, whence the Ghebirs or fireworshippers, on their extirpation by the advance of Islamism, retired into remote, inaccessible wilds, and of whom some had probably crossed the gulf to the rocky shores of Oman. He doubted, indeed, whether fire worship had ever been indigenous or become naturalised among any Arab tribe. With respect to the Nedjed horses, he had one in his stable at that moment of the lineage of which he must say he had no doubt, but which was of the very bay, color which Mr Palgrave had assured him was tabooed. He added his testimony to the accurate delineations of manners contained in the sketch that had given them so much pleasure, and trusted Mr Palgrave would continue to contribute to our acquaintance with a country so little known.