Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia

Abstract

THE author of this volume was an enthusiastic admirer of the Arabian horse, and seems to have visited the Arab tribes in the neighbourhood of Aleppo and Damascus with the single purpose of seeing and purchasing high-bred animals and acquiring information about the breed. The narrative part of the book is not furnished with dates, but from incidental remarks it appears that Major Upton was at Aleppo in 1875 and at Damascus in 1878. On the former occasion he journeyed eastward as far as the Euphrates, but does not seem to have descended below Balis, or to have ever been more than two days' journey from Aleppo. On this tour the traveller was mainly among half-settled tribes, and at the season of his visit the great hordes of pure nomads who sometimes pasture their flocks in the district had withdrawn to the south. Of the author's excursion from Damascus he gives no topographical detail. It was simply a visit to an encampment of the Eastern Anazeh.

Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia.

By the late Major R. D. Upton. (London: C. Kegan Paul and Co., 1881.)