The most important days of the Pilgrimage are the 8th, 9th, and 10th of the moon of Zú-’l-hijjah. Now, the 8th of Zú-’l-hijjah is the day of the Repose of the Soul. In Arabic it is called Youm-ul-Tarvih, and it sees the exodus of the pilgrims from Mecca on their way to the Hill of Arafat. The most noteworthy “column” of the Hájj is the sermon which is preached on the mount on the following day. No pilgrim is qualified to call himself Hájí unless he is present on that occasion. The preacher sits on a camel, and the pilgrims gather round him, those who can find no room on the slopes taking up their positions on the plain. Not ten pilgrims in a hundred can hear a word, and so the majority while away the time in praying, in weeping, in chatting, in telling stories, and even in making love. If they fall asleep or lose consciousness they are counted as absent. They must arrive before noon and must remain until after sunset. If they leave before the appointed time they must pay forfeit either by sacrificing a camel or else by keeping fast for eighteen days running. This day is named Youm-ul-Arafat in Arabic.

The pilgrims, before reaching the plain of Arafat, must perform their religious purifications, and, on arriving on the Hill itself, they must recite the following Niyyat: “O God, I purpose, in obedience to Thy commands, to abide here until the setting of the sun.” With this they must say aloud a prayer which runs: “I praise Thee, I glorify Thee, O Lord; there is no God but Thee. I have burdened my conscience with wrongdoing, and now acknowledge my sins. O, forgive me my trespasses, O Lord, for, verily, Thou art the best forgiver.” Nor is this all; for the pilgrims, having declared their intention and confessed their sins, must pray for their parents, their relatives, their co-religionists, their servants, and their slaves. The number of persons thus honoured in the remembrance should not be less than forty; and for this act of grace the pilgrims will be rewarded one hundred thousandfold. Furthermore, in the course of the day what we have called the Song of the Winding-sheet or Talbih must be repeatedly intoned, as must also the Tamjid or hymn of praise, and the glorification of God’s omnipotence, which is styled Takbir. Then, when the sun is setting, the pilgrims turn their faces in the direction of the Ka’bah and recite this prayer: “I take refuge in Thee, O Lord, from poverty, and from the evil that may come out of the day or the night; I repent of all my wicked deeds, trusting in Thy gracious pardon; and I seek shelter from fear in Thy protection: O Lord, I repent, I repent, I repent.” The second “column” of the Hájj takes place immediately after sunset, when the pilgrims rush forward impetuously from Arafat to Muzdalifah, in order to remember God near the holy monument (in Arabic, al Masher al harám), where, on a mountain on the thither side of Muzdalifah, the Prophet is said to have stood praying until his face shone as one who had seen his Lord. There the pilgrims pass the night, and at the hour of morning prayer they say: “O Lord, in obedience to Thy commands, I break my morning at Thy Masher al harám.” Thence they proceed to Mina, through which valley they passed on their road to Arafat, and there the stoning of the devil and the slaying of the sacrifices, two notable “columns” of the pilgrimage, are performed. This is the Youm-ul-Nahre or Day of Sacrifice.

On the eve of Youm-ul-Tarvih my friends and I went to stay the night with a Persian grandee who had taken up his lodgings in a large house near the Harem. We will call his name Ardashir Morad Khan. His was in many respects an exceptional character. He had acquired a knowledge of the French tongue without learning to detest the French nation, and had studied the Darwinian theory of the origin of species without aping the European. His conversation was grave and impersonal. He was communicative without being confidential. He never betrayed a trust, nor blabbed his personal secrets. From him I learned all I know of the political situation in Persia; and the Youm-ul-Tarvih was six hours gone—remember, in the East, the day begins and ends with the setting of the sun—ere we closed the debate and flung ourselves down to rest. Morning broke. Ardashir Morad Khan, having performed his ablutions, was saying his prayers, and I was drinking a cup of tea when there came a knock at the door, and a Persian friend of ours rushed into the room. His excitement knew no bounds. He stood bereft of speech from sheer lack of breath; but his face spoke volumes.

“Well, Sheykh Eissa,” said I, “what is the news?”

Ardashir Morad Khan dropped his rosary and looked up, listening. Sheykh Eissa coughed as if to clear his gorge, and cried—

“My manuscript on the Bedouins is lost; the precious volume has been stolen! For the last seventeen years, as I told you yesterday, I have wandered from tribe to tribe as a talisman-monger in order that I might study the customs and the character of the Bedouins, and give to the world a faithful history of my experiences. I had promised to show you the result of my labour, and now I am constrained by fate to re-shape my impressions. Youm-ul-Tarvih? Wáh! How can my soul repose?”

I handed the rebellious little man a cup of tea. Having taken a sip, he reached out for the sugar. “Your tea is as bitter as mortality,” he said, and straightway converted it into syrup. I recalled a pretty Persian story. “Perhaps,” I replied, “the clay from which the cup was made was once man.” The fancy, though borrowed, restored the Sheykh’s good humour. “It is the burned clay of my thief’s grandfather,” he declared, with a quaint uplifting of his shaggy eyebrows, “or I am an infidel. My precious manuscript—how can to-day be Youm-ul-Tarvih? Assuredly it is the Day of Sacrifice.” Seyyid ’Alí now entered the room. He said: “I have engaged a moghavem, what we Persians call a hamlehdar; he will be here with his mules and camels at midday; and our tents are even now on their way to the Hill of Arafat, where an aristocratic position has been reserved for them.”

“Surely you mean the Valley of Mina?” I asked. “No, no,” broke in our host, Ardashir Morad Khan; “the custom of sleeping at Mina on the outward journey was abolished long ago on account of the delay its observance occasioned, and that for no purpose that would warrant——”

Sheykh Eissa leaped to his feet. “I ask pardon of God,” he cried. “Why, the Prophet himself was accustomed to halt at Mina from six hours after sunrise on Youm-ul-Tarvih until sunrise next morning, and there he used to say the five prescribed prayers. Surely that fact alone would warrant our observance of the law?”

“Well,” I replied, “I must confess that I am delighted to know that we shall have more roomy quarters for the night. The Valley of Mina is a mere gully. According to my calculation there must be scarcely less than three hundred thousand pilgrims in this city.”

“Say four hundred thousand and you will not exaggerate the number,” interrupted our host. “What is your opinion, Sheykh Eissa?”

“The pilgrims are innumerable this year, your Excellency. It is not possible to count them. The angels in heaven are not more numerous. Nine years ago the pilgrims outnumbered the present calculation of our distinguished friend. This year Youm-ul-Nahre falls on a Friday, and I am sure there never was before a concourse so great in the City of God.”

“I admire the beauty of your flight, Sheykh Eissa,” I said, dryly. “But let us deal with facts. I came here by the last pilgrim boat. Some two hundred thousand passports had then been handed in at Jiddah by the seafaring pilgrims. Do you mean to say that the number of Hájís who have crossed the desert are equal to the number of those who have crossed the seas from every corner of the Muslim world? I will never believe it. The advantages are all in favour of the oversea route. It is cheaper, it is quicker, it is safer, and it is perhaps less tedious. For a fare of a few dollars any starveling can go by steamer from Suez to Jiddah. The result is that the old caravan routes with the one exception of the Syrian are, comparatively speaking, deserted. For instance, the Muslims of Morocco and North Africa are now conveyed to Mecca by sea. The contingent sent by Persia down the Gulf outnumbers that which journeys across Arabia. True, the Syrian caravan still maintains not a little of its ancient glory. This year it is unusually gigantic, containing as it does, in my opinion, not less than seventeen thousand camels. The Bedouins are also, I admit, in force; so let us say there are two hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims in Mecca all told. We shall have a better opportunity of testing the accuracy of the figures when we are encamped on the Plain of Arafat. But be the number what it may, it is, at the lowest estimate, far too great for me not to congratulate myself that the custom of sleeping overnight in that death-trap of Mina has been done away with.”

Sheykh Eissa smiled. “It would be impossible to extol its charms as a camping-ground. But I, for one, remember that, though the halt on the outward journey has been abolished, there we must stay for three or at the least for two days after slaying the sacrifices. For the rest, I am far from sharing your love of the oversea route from the outlying dominions of the Prophet. In my youth I travelled by caravan from Morocco to Medina and thence to this holy city. Along the northern coast of Africa, through Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, to the Land of Pyramids, we wandered, halting for one day in every six days in order that our camels might gather strength to sustain the hardships of the road; and in Cairo we joined the Egyptian caravan, whence we proceeded together on our way—an endless string of pilgrims, glorying in our liberty, praising God for His gifts of heaven and earth, burying our dead where they fell—now in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and now in the desert to the south, until we reached at last the sepulchre of the Prophet and the place of his birth. I deny not that God created the sea as well as the desert. Nay, nay, spare your eloquence. My stomach at sea is as inconstant as the waters. I am a Bedouin at heart. However, you must stay at Mina for three or for two days after the Day of Sacrifice.”

“If the cholera fiend should not drive us hence in search of refuge,” I interpolated. “The epidemic is on the increase. The sacrifices slain, we shall be only too glad to make good our escape to the sea.”

“True,” said Seyyid ’Alí, grimly, “if the cholera fiend should not choose for us an underground route to a city of eternal rest! If it please God, I shall conduct your Excellency to Jiddah so soon as the sun shall set on Youm-ul-Nahre. For I have no wish to fall a victim to the fell disease, Sheykh Eissa.”

With the foregoing words my guide bade us good-bye and went about his business in my service. He came back, however, almost immediately. “May it please your Excellency,” he said, addressing Ardashir Morad Khan, “Khalil is fallen sick of the cholera and is even now at the point of death.” Now, Khalil was our host’s steward and had set out for the Hill of Arafat in charge of the tents and baggage. Ardashir Morad Khan looked extremely grave. “God have mercy on his soul!” he cried. Then, “Where is he now?” he asked; “and who has taken his place?” Seyyid ’Alí replied that the man had been brought back on a bier to Mecca, and was then lying in a cellar attached to the kitchen of the house in which we were. A panic would have followed this statement had not our host cried out in a voice of sternest command: “I must request you all to be calm. We must set the servants an example of courage. Are we not the slaves of God?... Well, Seyyid ’Alí, who has taken over the control of our caravan?” “The cook of your Excellency’s household,” replied my guide, “assumed the direction of affairs. I have done my best to restore the confidence of your Excellency’s household. The servants need a firm hand to keep them from running away.”

So Ardashir Morad Khan left the room, and when he came back I requested permission to see the sick man. The other guests, who were sitting round the room with their backs to the walls, jumped up at once and made a low bow to me as I passed by to the servant’s quarters. The Meccan houses are generally lower than the surface of the street without, and when this is the case a flight of stone steps leads from the first floor into the court round which the apartments range. I found Khalil in the cellar. He was sinking fast. Nobody had dared to stay with him. His eyes were dried up in the sockets and blackened all round the rims. Not an ounce of flesh remained on his body. The stench was unendurable. The bearers, having stretched his legs in the direction of the Ka’bah and given him a cup of sour milk wherewith to quench his thirst, had gone away, leaving him a prey to the fell disease. Compassion rent my heart, but I could do nothing: remedy I had none. I saw, moreover, that he was too far gone to recover, and, indeed, scarcely was he aware of my presence than his new-born hope was strangled by death. “Yá—Allah!” he muttered, and that was the last time he drew breath. Having rejoined my host, I went with him into the city.

The streets were packed with camels, brought in thousands by the Bedouins and by the Syrian and the Egyptian drivers. Round about the Harem the moghavems tried our endurance to the utmost. These are the men who conduct the pilgrims by camel caravan to the Hill of Arafat and back, supplying all their needs on the journey. There is no fixed price for the hiring of a camel, but by dint of persistent bargaining it is possible to get one for five shillings, and each moghavem may have as many as fifty pilgrims under him. We were tormented by these contractors more than I had ever been tormented by the Indian jugglers outside the gates of any hotel in Bombay. They were as plentiful as flies in Egypt and not less irritating. Perhaps that is the fault of the pilgrims themselves. They begin by feigning indifference, and when they have reduced the moghavems to a haughty silence they assume an air of eager business. Thus the moghavems have learned from experience never to take no for an answer.

Out of the madding crowd the talk was all of the cholera epidemic. On my way to a coffee-house I happened to meet a Turkish official, an acquaintance of mine, and he gave it as his conviction that the death-rate had risen to over five hundred victims a day. He advised me to leave the Valley of Mina at sunset on the tenth of the moon. In the coffee-house a Syrian pilgrim entered into conversation with me. He told many stories of his pilgrimage across the desert: of the discomforts and the perils of the road, of the cruelties of the drivers, and the almost inconceivable presumption of his own moghavem. With the immense caravan had come the Syrian Mahmil, in the charge of a Pasha, and the Surreh, in the care of another Turkish dignitary. This Surreh is the pension sent from Constantinople to the officials of the Harem. It was formerly the accumulated hoard of centuries of legacies. It is now managed by the Imperial Treasury. A strong force of cavalry accompanied the caravan, which, according to the pilgrim in question, counted some eighteen thousand camels.

The number stated was, perhaps, an exaggeration, though a pardonable one, for the string which I saw on reaching the Plain of Sheykh Mahmud, where the caravan had been encamped, and which was now on the move, extended for miles and miles. I determined then and there to avoid the crush on the road by remaining in Mecca until the day was far spent. It was four hours before sunset ere I could tear myself away from the Plain of Sheykh Mahmud. The endless string of camels and of pilgrim wayfarers was an unforgettable sight, and on my return to my host’s house I met crowds of Syrian and Egyptian stragglers, mounted and on foot, proceeding up the Moalla to rejoin the immense caravan which was already threading its way to the mountains.

Seyyid ’Alí gave me a hearty welcome when I entered the house. He had scoured the city, he said, in search of me, and had given me up for dead. I found everything in readiness for our journey, and when we had smoked a kalyán or two and quenched our thirst we got astride our ambling mules and made for the Hill of Arafat.

Now, when my friends and I left Mecca for the Hill of Arafat it was about four o’clock in the afternoon of Youm-ul-Tarvih. Late as it was, the streets were still packed with men and beasts. In the indescribable confusion steady progress was impossible, and to the universal disorder was added the danger of a general stampede on the part of our mules. The uncertain tempers of those animals of ours taxed our patience to the utmost. We had hired them in the belief that they were tractable creatures trained to amble. We rode them in terror of our lives, conscious of our impotence to control their paces. Now they would charge through a crowd in a panic blind and headlong, and next they would stand stock-still in a sweat of suspicion at the mere sight of a straw or a splash of water on the road. Our moghavem, having a lively inkling of our rising indignation, assured us with haughty unconcern that we had been wiser to have followed his advice and ridden camels. With one thing and another it took us quite an hour to reach the outskirts of the city. All the people we had met wore íhram except the drivers and the servants, who were in their ordinary clothes.

Outside Mecca the road widens, taking an abrupt turn from a northerly to a north-easterly direction. We passed innumerable huts and Bedouin tents, we skirted the Jebelé-Nur or Mountain of Light on our left, and then, swerving back to the north, we kept a sharp look-out for the pitfalls which beset our every step. In no case were the mountains many miles away. The colour of them changed gradually from a gloomy drab to a deep brown. Many camels had knocked up and lay festering in the sun. Along the route dead pilgrims had been buried so close to the surface that the odour of putrefaction polluted the air. The stench of decaying flesh was positively sickening. Again and again I had to hold my nose and cry aloud, “Astaghferallah Menash-Shaitan: I seek shelter in God from Satan.” This phrase was used more often than any other, and in varying moods and with many meanings. Every time an animal fell down its driver would mutter the expression. If the animal remained obstinate, refusing to rise, the driver would rub his hands and repeat the words. An Arab Sheykh who rode behind me took refuge in God against the devil whenever he failed in his attempt to get past me. This was merely a sign of impatience. Had he given vent to his feelings by saying the formula sixty-nine times in quick succession I might possibly have made way for him for no other reason than because I should have expected him to strike a blow in defence of his claim to precede me. For the Prophet has said: “Utter not a word in wroth until you have repeated seventy Astaghferallahs.” Believe me, it is a word to conjure with. As a mark of ironic negation it is more convincing than the strongest affirmative. In a rocky pass I asked Seyyid ’Alí, whose face had turned copper-red, and whose lips were scorched, if he was thirsty. “Astaghferallah, yá-Moulai!” he cried, smiling ironically. Later on, in the neck of the pass, where two men could not ride abreast, I had proof of the expression being used by way of a courteous refusal. Riding far ahead of us two mullás in íhram, with shaven heads and unkempt beards, drew rein simultaneously, each requesting the other to pass on. This exchange of punctilio was most unseasonable. So long did the two priests bandy courtesy, crying “Astaghferallah” one after the other, that the word was soon used in a contrary sense by the pilgrims in the rear.

We waited about five minutes for the intervening pilgrims to ride on in single file, and when we reached the spot it was to find that the road lay between two rocks some four feet apart. One of my friends, quoting a well-worn proverb, bent towards me and remarked: “Why do they not remove those stones out of the path of the Faithful?” Seyyid ’Alí observed a priest in front of him, and replied significantly, “I behold a bigger stone in my path!” The priest, who was reading the Kurán atop of his camel, overheard the words, and tugged his camel round that he might face the sceptical rascal. The camel made a vicious snap at Seyyid ’Alí’s mule. The mule, finding itself between two fires—the rock on the one side and the camel on the other—sat down on its haunches; and my guide, crying out the word, “Astaghferallah,” came a cropper, striking his head against a stone. The upper portion of his íhram fell off. “Was it you, Seyyid ’Alí who fell?” cried Sheykh Eissa. Seyyid ’Alí, all bruised and bleeding, crept from under the mule’s legs, and picked up his sacred habit. “Astaghferallah!” he replied; “it was not I who fell. It was my íhram. Unfortunately I happened to be in it.” A burst of laughter followed and then a shrill scream. “I verily believe,” said Sheykh Eissa, addressing me, “that your guide would make a kitten ‘eat a dozen sticks’ if it mispronounced the Arabic letter ‘ain’ in the feline word ‘maou! maou!’”

But I had turned whence the scream had come and made him no reply. My guide’s mishap, as I saw on looking ahead, had excited the compassion of a lady in a palanquin. She was a Meccan. No sooner did she see the blood than she uttered a shriek of deepest commiseration. Then she recovered herself, and cooed out a couple of orders. Her warmth of heart was now as evident as had been her emotional susceptibility. In one breath she summoned her husband and sent him to Seyyid ’Alí with an offer of a certain famous prescription for wounds and bruises. In the next she implored her moghavem to ransack on one of the camels a chest that contained, among other things, a small bottle of scorpion oil. It was the remedy in question. This is the way it is prepared: the stings having been extracted, a couple of black scorpions are dried in the sun, are then put in a bottle holding about half a pint of castor-oil, and in this they are kept corked up for the space of a year. The unwilling Arab made demur, pleading that the delay would inconvenience the pilgrims behind her own caravan; but she reduced him to obedience with a look. “Be sharp!” she crooned, as he swung reluctantly on his heel; so sweet was her voice that without another sign of hesitation he leaped forward to carry out her wishes. The camel was made to kneel down by the wayside; then the chest was overhauled. By the time her husband had returned the precious oil was found and given to him. “Take it,” she said, still gazing in ’Alí’s countenance over her husband’s shoulder, “and tell him to use it unsparingly lest the beauty of his face should be ruined.” Meccan gentlewomen allow themselves a certain freedom of speech and action, otherwise a less presentable man than this woman’s husband might have been jealous enough to resent the frank admiration in her voice. Seyyid ’Alí, having laid on the oil by means of a wooden bodkin used for the purpose, handed the bottle back to the husband, who pressed him to accept the rest of its contents, which would be useful, he said, in case of further accident. My guide, however, refused with many thanks, saying that he could not find it in his heart to deprive the giver of the possibility of exercising her compassion on the next unfortunate she might chance to meet. And with this our respective caravans moved on.

Before reaching the Valley of Mina a serious accident happened, this time to a Malay pilgrim—an accident that proved fatal to him, for he was crushed to death in a stampede of mules. I am happy to say that our own caravan was not concerned in the disaster. Two women swooned at the sight, and all the other women round about raised their voices in bitterest lamentation, as though they had lost a near relative. A quarter of an hour after, when the unfortunate man had been laid to rest in his shallow grave, the two women who had fainted fell to prattling merrily as if nothing untoward had occurred. In fact, the chief characteristics of the Oriental woman are her absolute helplessness outside the restricted limits of her special sphere of influence, and the swiftness with which she passes from one emotion to another. There is no transition in her moods. She passes from the tearful or the terrible to the mirthful or the ridiculous at a single bound of her mercurial temperament. She is at once more womanish and more womanly than her European sisters. Not less marked, on this journey of ours to the holiest mountain of Islám, were the vanity of the wealthier classes as it preened itself among the men, and the unfailing good humour of the mob. A Persian nobleman, to whom my host had attached himself, had a special chamberlain whose sole duty it was to hand his lord and master a cigarette whenever he felt disposed to smoke. Another grandee of the same nationality, if he had occasion to drop his reins in order to adjust his beard, would cry out at the top of his voice to his moghavem, saying: “Boy, come here! Hand me the reins!” preserving the while an expression of sphinx-like aloofness from all human kind.

As for the good temper of the crowd, it was due, I avow, to the soberness of each and every individual in it. Of drunkenness there was nothing on the road so far as my experience went, though I am constrained to admit that a good many pilgrims of my acquaintance had smuggled along with them a bottle or two of brandy apiece which, as a safeguard against prying eyes, had been labelled “cholera mixture.” When I say the mob was sober I only mean that it was not drunk. Its humour, of course, was individualised. It varied with the character of the unit. Some of the pilgrims were lively, frivolous, even rowdy in a playful sort of way, meaning no mischief. These chatted and chaffed and flirted, killing monotony in many a breach of etiquette. They being theoretically resigned to the will of Allah, were resolved in practice to reflect Omnipotence in a merry mood. Others, rapt and devotional, intoned the holy and instructive Kurán, as they sat on their camels or limped barefooted over the stony ground. Prayers were muttered, religious hymns were sung, tears were shed, tales were told, amid the deafening shouts of the drivers and the lofty orders of the moghavems. Conspicuous in their pastime on the road were the Bedouins. Either they beguiled the tedium of the march by singing love-songs that acted like magic on the listeners, or else they showed that their weariness under restraint was invincible by frequent salivation. For yawning is almost exclusively a European habit. Oriental folk rarely yawn in public. If they are bored they give odd little sham coughs instead, while the Bedouins get rid of their moral phlegm or call attention to its existence by expectorating. Nor is the habit regarded even by the most courteous among them as offensive: it is hallowed by custom. The virtue of politeness is relative. In Great Britain, for example, the very sound of the word “belch” could only be described as unspeakable; whereas the act itself in many Eastern countries breathes grace and gratitude after meat on the part of the guests. The more often it is repeated by them the better pleased is their host. Thus it is not in a carping frame of mind that I have written down whatever in the manners of my co-religionists excited my quasi-European squeamishness.

Now, the road, before entering the narrow Wadi of Mina, in which a village stands, narrows into a gap and climbs a flight of stone steps. There the pilgrims thought it necessary, as, indeed, I suppose it was, to call a halt, while they performed a two-prostration prayer, and in the chaos of confusion which arose I was separated from my companions, or shoved forward by the pressure of the crowd behind me. I was about to force my way back to them when I caught sight of a young Syrian girl sitting astride an ass. In the excitement of the moment she had forgotten to cover her face, and our eyes met. On the instant all thought of returning left me, for the girl was good to behold. The caravan she was with numbered about fifty people, and with it I rode along through the village into the dreary gully beyond. Every now and then we would glance at each other, the maiden and I. She was shy, and I was anything but bold, breathing, in her neighbourhood, a spell so pure. So on we journeyed, side by side, I covertly watching her every movement, and she playing hide-and-seek with my eyes, until at last I summoned the courage to smile on her. By chance, or I know not by what blessing, the smile was returned, and so heartening was its effect on me that my whole being seemed to throb, “not from one heart, but from a hundred!” Never was I so near to a complete surrender to love at first sight. In the meantime the sun was going down behind the mountains in the west; shopkeepers were busy erecting their booths in readiness for the return of the Hájj on the Day of Sacrifice; torches were lighted, casting a lurid glare around; cannons were fired and rockets flung aloft to announce to the weary pilgrims the hour of evening prayer. There, in the ruddy light about us and the gathering darkness beyond, my maiden and I knelt down, obeying the call of the faith, within arm’s reach of each other. In my heart of hearts I prayed that God would give me one day a helpmate as sweet as my companion.

Not a word had passed between us, nor did we exchange more than a glance, when the caravan got under way again. To my dismay there came along, with furtive tread, an ugly-looking Syrian, barefoot and old, and entered into conversation with me, placing himself, with an air of suspicion that nettled, and a look of proprietorship that alarmed me, between the maiden and myself. I thought that he might be her father, but he said he was her husband. Instinctively I drew rein, and soon she was lost to me in the blackness of the night. Caravan after caravan went by, but there I remained, meditating first on the ways of the veil-worn sex, and then on my hapless lot, cut off as I was from my companions, with only a few mejidis in silver in a small bag round my neck. By and by the moon rose, and I pulled myself together. In truth, the pangs of a healthy appetite began to clamour for satisfaction, and so I pressed forward until I reached the top of the valley, which was simply blocked with pilgrims, all hurrying as fast as they could go to the Mosque of Khaif. There I alighted, and, leading my mule by the bridle, made to cross the open space in front, where several coffee booths offered refreshment; but my obstinate beast would not budge, pull as I might. Not for nothing do the Easterns call them “the children of donkeys.” They are certainly more stubborn and more uncertain than their mothers. Many paupers were hanging about, and any one of them would have been only too glad to take the mule in tow, but the danger was that he would run away with it—such cases of theft are of frequent occurrence on the pilgrimage—and therefore I called to a booth-keeper asking him to send out his man to take charge of the beast that I might go and quench my thirst and smoke a pipe at his stall. Once rid of my stupid burden, I pushed my way into the booth which was crowded with pilgrims of the poorer classes. My sudden appearance among them raised not a little astonishment. I fraternised at once with a needy Bedouin, and together we smoked a pipe of peace. Suddenly a gun went off outside the booth, the report echoing and re-echoing among the mountains. “A blood-feud!” cried my companion, leaping to his feet, then ran out of doors.