INTRODUCTION
when all is said and done, the Empty Quarter would seem
to be far from justifying "the lurid colours in which it has
been painted by some European travellers, and in which it
is always painted by the Arabs of settled tracts who have
never been within view of it, though the crossing of it is an
adventure not to be lightly undertaken by the uninitiated.^1
For fifteen years ray life has been dominated by a single
ide&, a single ambition—rather perhaps a single obsession.
Faithfully, fanntkmily and relentlessly through all those
yearn I have Htalked the quarry which now, in these pages,
lies "before t4i«3 nmrkr- directed, belabelled and described.
1 have not, (whftpft, accomplished all that I planned to do,
but I have done cmough to set my soul at rest, released from
its long bondage. Nor, again, have I been alone, or even
first, in the field, Tho honours of priority have gone to
another that outwent mo in tho race ; and Bertram Thomas
deservedly wcsars the iatmsh of a pioneer, I have but gleaned
wharo ho ronfiod, though pctrohanco it was no mere coinci-
dence that wo hud laboured together—Arcade* am&o—in the
name vineyard of Ammcm before ho went to Omman. As
the Arab poet sang of ok!:
Twas 1 that fearn*d him in the archer's art;
At m«, hit ham! grown atrong, ha hunched his dart*
My own inspiration camo from one of the great masters
of Arabian lore. It was on January 8th, 1818—just after
my first crossing of the Arabian peninsula from the Persian
Gulf to the Red Sea- that 1 fint met the late Dr, D, Q,
Hogarth. He was disguised as a mere Commander of the
Royal Navy, while I wore the flowing robes of an Arab
Shaikh. Our meeting was in the spacious raeas-room of the
British politico-military Mission at Jidda, in which were
merged the British Consulate And Agency destined, in due
course and for reasons at that moment unforseeable and
unthinkable, to be transformed into a Legation, I wa* a
stranger within the gate, the envoy of a * hostile' camp, a
l id. 117*