Ishmael, therefore, and his posterity were to be wild, fierce, savage,
ranging in the deserts, and not easily softened and tamed to society;
and whoever hath read, or known any thing of this people, knoweth
this to be their true and genuine character. It is said of Ishmael,
(Gen. xxi. 20.) that he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer;
and the same is no less true of his descendants than of himself. He
dwelt in the wilderness, and his sons still inhabit the same wilder-
ness, and many of them neither sow nor plant*, according to the
best accounts, ancient and modern. And he became an archer; and
such were the Itureans, whose * bows and arrows are famous in all
authors; such were the mighty men of Kedar in Isaiah's time ;
(Isa. xxi, 17.) and such the Arabs have been from the beginning, and


1 See Part i. Book ii. C, 32. See likewise Harris’s Voyages, Vol. II. Book ii. Chap. ix.
- ® Hierozoic. Pars prior, Lib. 111. Cap. xvi. col, 878.
* Ammianus Marcellinus, Lib. xiv. Cap. iv. p. 14. Edit. Valesii, Paris, 1681. Harris,
Vol. II. Book ii. Chap. ix.
* — Itureos taxi torquentur in arcus. Virgil, Georg. ii. 448.
the Iturean yew

Receives the bending figure of a bow. ]

Itureis cursus fuit inde sagittis.
{Here Itureean arrows wing’d their course. |


Oa





Lucan, vii. 230.
20 DISSERTATION It.
are at this time. It was late before they admitted the use of fire-
arms among them; ‘the greater part of them still are strangers to
them, and still continue skilful archers.
