By A. E. and S. M. ZWEMER Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country Topsy-Turvy Land The Desert Scout ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE CAMEL COUNTRY ARABIA IN PICTURE AND STORY By SAMUEL M. ZWEMER and AMY E. ZWEMER Authors of “Topsy Turvy Land” New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1911, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY To the children of missionaries all the world over...

Here is another book of pictures and stories for the big children and small grown-up folks who enjoyed reading “Topsy Turvy Land” and want to know more about Arabia. A great part of this strange Camel Country is still unknown, and there are wide deserts which only the camel and his Arab guide have ever crossed. A few travellers and missionaries, however, have seen something of Arabia on their zigzag journeys along the coasts and inland. Would you like to hear the story? The camels are waiting an

Zigzag are the lines across the deserts of Arabia that mark the weary journeys of the camel caravans for centuries. Arabia has no straight roads. The crooked, winding paths through valley and along mountainside or over sandy tracks are worn smooth by the shuffling feet of the animal-with-the-long-neck. Every bit of desert thorn or green herb on either side of the path means a step away from the straight line. The caravan zigzags towards its destination. The ship of the desert makes more tacks in

Mr. and Mrs. Camel At Home All Over Arabia. B. C. 4000 — A. D. 1911. Persia for goats, Egypt for crocodiles, Cashmere for sheep, Thibet for bulldogs, India for tigers, but Arabia for the camel! To see real live dromedaries, you must come to Arabia. For although the camel is often met with elsewhere, no country can show him in all his beauty like that country which is called by the Arabs themselves “Um-el-Ibl,” mother of the camel. The Oman dromedary is the prince of all camel breeds, and is so h

Those who think Arabia is a sandy desert with a few nomad tents and camels and ostriches scattered over it, have never seen Yemen. Yemen is the most fertile and most beautiful of all the provinces of Arabia. It means the right hand , and this name was given it as one of good omen by the early Arabs. It was called by the Romans Arabia Felix , or Happy Arabia, to distinguish it from Arabia Petrea (Stony Arabia) and Arabia Deserta (Desert Arabia). Those who have never gone inland from Aden cannot i

The Arabs are a very old-fashioned people. In fact, their customs have not changed since the time that Ishmael as a boy went with his mother Hagar on the camels and landed somewhere in Arabia. I suppose that even in those old times the Arabs and the Syrians kept a weekly market where all the people from all the villages came together to barter their wares, to shake hands and make acquaintance and go back with a larger idea of their small world. The custom of holding weekly markets on a special d

You have all read the story given in 1 Kings x. of the Queen of Sheba and her visit to Solomon of whose fame she had heard in her distant kingdom in Southwest Arabia, but the story as told in Mohammed’s Bible, the Koran, is very different, and has many curious fables mixed up with it. It is found in the chapter called “The Ant,” and this is how he tells it. “We heretofore bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon: and they said, Praise be unto God, who hath made us more excellent than many of His

Nearly all of the people who live in the country of the camel are Mohammedans, but it was not always so. Before the days of Mohammed, the prophet, there were very many Christians in Arabia and also many Jews. The former lived mostly in the southern part of the great peninsula, but the Jews had large settlements not only in the country of the Queen of Sheba—of which we have heard—but also at Mecca and Medina, which are now the two sacred cities, and especially in the country north of Medina, Khei

Did you ever see a woman or a girl dressed in such a strange way as the one in the picture? Of course you know that Moslem women wear veils, but this veil is like a window-casing with the panes of glass knocked out. It is made of stiff cloth, heavily embroidered, sometimes with gilt or silver embroidery, and has a nose piece and strings to fasten around the head. In addition to this curious veil you notice that she has three bracelets on each arm, and you can get a glimpse of her nose jewel hang

The Ten Commandments were written on two tables of stone but these original stones are lost; the High Priest Aaron had twelve most precious stones in his breast plate when he went into the holy place to minister; Jacob placed a stone for a pillow when he fled from his brother, but no one has found this old memorial. Many other wonderful stones are held almost sacred because of past history. Stone worship is one of the oldest forms of idolatry. The old Druid stone in England, where the priests of

If one could have all the boys of the world pass by in single file and take down their names one by one, there would be a great many who bore the same name. Johns and Henrys and Carls and Hans there would be by the thousands, but there would be no name which so many boys had in common, I am sure, as the name of Mohammed. It is a very safe estimate to say that there are living in the world to-day no less than five million boys and men who bear that name. Yet I wonder how many of you know who Moha

The Arabs are a proud and noble race. They are proud of their liberty and of their free open-air desert customs. They are proud of their religion and of their prophet. They are proud of their history and of their patriarchal descent. But most of all, they are proud of their language, one of the oldest and most wonderful forms of human speech. Mohammed himself in his Koran, which you know is the Moslem Bible, speaks of the Arab tongue as “the language of the angels.” He and the Arabs believed tha

Nearly all the British India steamers in their zigzag journeys up the Persian Gulf, calling first at the Arabian coast and then at the Persian coast, stop at the pearl islands of Bahrein. Half-way up the Gulf and thirty miles from the mainland of Arabia, this group of islands has been famous for centuries as the most valuable pearl fishery in the world. For at least two thousand years the Arabs have been diving in these waters and bringing up the costly shells. Before the days of Christ, and eve

It was on Saturday morning, February 9, 1901, that Elias, our colporteur, and I started for a journey along the eastern coast of Arabia, and, as we hoped, inland. Our expectations of a long camel journey and the sight of villages not yet marked on the map between the coast and Muscat were disappointed. But the result was a journey of 440 miles and more along the coast to the rocky cape that guards the narrow entrance to the Gulf. Our experiences were so interesting that I will relate some of the

Oman is a little peninsula that sticks out eastward from the big peninsula of Arabia, and it might almost be called an island. On three sides are the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and on the west is the great sea of sand which the Arabs call the “empty abode,” and which has never been crossed by any traveller as far as we know. The Arabs themselves are afraid to venture beyond the limits of the oases that touch its borders, and on all the maps of Arabia this desert is marked “

Did you ever hear of missionaries who were jail-birds? Well, that has been my experience. This is how it was. The day after Christmas about ten years ago it was decided that we make a tour to the mainland of Arabia from the island of Bahrein, our station. The picnic basket was packed with fresh bread and canned meats and good things, and we also took along extra clothing, a box of books and some medicines for the people. Our Arab servant had a hard time of it to secure a boat that would take us

To the American schoolboy a Moslem school and school-books would appear the dullest things possible. Yet the Arab boys do enjoy school for there is always something to distract the attention, especially if the teacher is a shopkeeper. While a customer bargains, or the water carrier passes, or the coffee-house man brings the daily “cup of cheer,” or, in the case of a woman teacher, callers come, all eyes and ears are open not towards the lesson but the conversation and the sights. The earliest an

The day was very hot, and I was very tired. The flies were buzzing thick around me and it was impossible for me to keep awake over the book which slipped from my fingers and fell on the floor. I stretched myself for one of those delightful noonday naps which, in spite of the heat and the flies, revive the life of the missionary and make him ready for the work of the afternoon, and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I was walking up towards the mission hospital, when what should I see coming down the

Our little Arab friend, Najma, was born a long distance from the place where last Christmas was spent. Bagdad is the city, you remember, where Sinbad the sailor lived, and in this very city on the old river Tibris Najma was born. Her father and mother were both good Moslems and she was their first-born child, and yet not very welcome, because all Moslems like to have boy babies and not girls. They gave her the name of Fatima after the daughter of Mohammed, their prophet. When she was afterwards

If all Arabia is to hear the story of the Gospel, there are many zigzag journeys yet to be made. The country is much larger than most people imagine, and a great part of it is still unexplored. Fortunately the unexplored sections of the great peninsula are nearly all uninhabited as far as we know, but no one has been there to see or investigate. If you were to travel from New York to Chicago and back on a camel, the distance would be about as great as to cross Arabia once in its broadest directi