med's collectors and plenipotentiaries as odious intruders. In a letter addressed to Moadz, Mohammed's political Resident in southern Yemen, El Aswad used the bold language: 'Give back to us, ye intruders, the land which you have seized, and restore to us in full what you have taken from us.'

These occurrences wore a sufficiently threatening aspect to engage Mohammed's serious attention, when their report reached him after his return from the farewell pilgrimage. For a few weeks they kept his settled designs upon Syria in the background. But to get rid of a dangerous adversary and rival, this fighting prophet possessed such great means, and had such little scruple in using them, that the rising of Aswad did not cause him great alarm, or turn him aside from his northern scheme. We have already seen that Sana, the capital of Yemen, which was the scene of Aswad's great triumph, also shortly after witnessed his assassination. Mohammed had not found it necessary to despatch a great army to the south: he accomplished his object in a simpler way, by applying a golden key to those in whom his rival trusted.

As soon as Mohammed had made arrangements to restore his supremacy in the south, by such easy means, he felt again at liberty to direct his whole attention to the renewal of attacks on the Roman empire, which he still contemplated as the consummation of his long-cherished and far-reaching plans. United Arabia, under his leadership, was not only to remain free from foreign domination and invasions, but it could aspire after subjugating foreign nations and supplying its wants from their riches. Towards the end of May, A..D. 632, two months after his last visit to Mecca, Mohammed issued orders to the people that the fighting men were to assemble, prepared to start on a war expedition against the Romans.

His own career was now rapidly drawing to a close, and the enterprise he thus commenced, but did not live to accomplish, fittingly crowns his life, and afresh reveals to us the ambitious goal to which it had long been directed. Mohammed began his activity as a prophet, by trying to make himself the supreme authority in heathen Mecca;

he spent the last ten years of his life as autocratic Ruler of Medina, whence he gradually extended his power over the whole of Arabia; and when death was already hovering over him, to snatch him for its prey, we find him absorbed in preparations for a renewed attempt to wrest dominion from the hands of the Christian Emperor of Rome.

In this last military enterprise it was not his intention to take the command of his army in person. His late experience with the expedition to Tabuk let it appear preferable for him to devolve the hardships and great responsibilities of such a campaign on younger shoulders. On the day following, his call to arms, Mohammed sent for Osama, the son of his emancipated slave and constant friend Zeid, who had lost his life in the first invasion of Syria, which he commanded, and addressed him thus: 'Osama, I appoint thee Commander-in-Chief of the army. March against the infidels of the country where thy father has been killed. Set fire to their goods and dwellings. March rapidly, so as to arrive before tidings of thy approach reach them. If the Most High give thee victory, do not long delay in the country, but return hither. Take guides and spies with thee, and send on archers in front.' Is it not remarkable and characteristic of this martial prophet that his course was cut short in the midst of the bustle of preparations for such a war, and that he died with these orders for slaughter, fire, and devastation, as it were, still on his lips?

In confiding to youthful Osama so responsible a post, the acute prophet was not only guided by feelings of gratitude for his late heroic friend, but also by the shrewd calculation that a young man who burned with the desire to avenge his father's death, and gallantly to win his spurs as a successful commander, would carry out most faithfully and fully the sanguinary instructions given him, Three days after Osama's appointment, Mohammed was seized with a violent attack of illness, an acute form of remittent fever, which was not of rare occurrence in Medina. On the following day, when the malady was steadily settling on his system, he fixed the army's standard with his own hands and presented it to Osama, saying: 'Enter thou on the holy war, in the name of God, and in behalf of the religion of God, and fight every one