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I have told you of a White Sea and a Black Sea. Here is a Red Sea. It is a long, narrow sea bordering Arabia. I don’t know why it’s called Red, unless it is because it’s red hot, for I have been there, and the water is as blue as the Mediterranean. There is a little strip of land that used to separate the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, but men have dug a canal through this strip of land so that ships may pass from the one sea to the other. This strip of land is the Isthmus of Suez and the canal across it is called the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal is one of the most important canals ever dug. It is important because, before it was dug, this little isthmus that tied together the two big continents of Africa and Asia, barred the way to ships and they had to go all the way round Africa to get to the east side of the World. It is a water gateway to the east part of the World and England owns it.
The driest city in the World is at the lower end of the Red Sea. It is called Aden. Aden is often called theGibraltar of the East, for the English own Aden too, and they hold on to it even though it is so dry, because then they can say who shall or shall not pass through the Red Sea. Three gateways for ships between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans—Gibraltar, Suez, Aden—and England owns all three!
There are no springs nor lakes nor rivers at Aden, and often it does not rain there for years, so the peoplecannot get drinking-water in any of the usual ways. But the English have found a way. They boil the sea water to get the salt out of it and store it in huge tanks so that they have plenty of fresh water all the time.
You may never have heard of Arabia till now, yet you write Arabic every day of your life, for all the figures we use are Arabic—1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There are only ten figures, as you know, but with those ten figures you can make any number from one to a billion, or more.
Arabia seems far away—a dry and desolate land that could have no connection with us—and yet if there had been no Arabia we should have no figures and no “Arabian Nights.”
