On bidding good-bye to the mighty capital of the world I reminded her that though her sombre stone mansions and teeming streets—and shall I say her epic atmosphere?—have for me an unspeakable charm, I was glad to be on my way to the city of great concourse, towards which I had so often turned my face in prayer, and in which the hearts of many millions of people are deeply rooted. Indeed, so certain are the majority of finding salvation within her sacred walls that it would be no exaggeration to declare their highest aspiration to be to see Mecca and die. Ah, well, I for one shall pray to see London again, for how could I ever forget the least of her gifts to me? Dear Alma Mater, au revoir!

While I was thus meditating the train puffed out of the station, and the shore of the English Channel was reached. The weather was mild, the sky was clear; even the worst sailor might feel sure of having a delightful passage, and I, praise the Powers, am a good sailor. And so it was: we reached the neighbouring shore without the slightest qualm, and arrived in Paris at six o’clock in the morning. Many people were already on the move—unlike London, where hardly anybody is seen about at that time of the day, except, perhaps, the loitering scum that begins to rise from the excess of the previous night’s libations. On the way from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon I noticed signs of the festivities in connection with the Centenary of Victor Hugo, and I could not help admiring the new statue raised this year to commemorate the strenuous genius of that great man. One short hour in Paris, then our train sped southward in brilliant sunshine, which seemed to draw me nearer to that burning Arabian land whither I was bound.

On my arrival at Marseilles I booked a berth on board the steamer Rewa, belonging to the British India Steam Navigation Company, as it proved to be the only one that would enable me to reach Port Said and to proceed thence to Suez by rail in time to catch the connection by boat to Jiddah.

I shall neither tax the reader’s patience nor trespass on my space by relating the trivial incidents of a voyage that presented little of interest to a travel-worn mind. It will be enough to say that the wind, which was as fair as one could desire till we reached the Straits of Messina, was bent afterwards on making another and an angrier sea. The discomfort of the passengers, most of whom were Britains bound for India, was betrayed by their seclusion from the open air. The nearer we approached the East, the more kindly grew the elements, until, on the seventh day, about seven o’clock in the morning, Port Said hove in sight. An hour later I had packed my kit and was ready for a hearty landing. Steaming slowly into the canal we passed the pier, which was still in course of construction, saluted the statue of de Lesseps, and raised a shout of surprise on counting not less than five Russian warships before we had reached our moorings. Those guardians of Russian prestige had come from Chinese waters, had remained five days at Suez, and were now coaling at Port Said, where they had arrived on the previous day. Not one single British man-of-war was to be seen. I had my breakfast at eight, after which I bade farewell to the captain and my travelling companions, going ashore in one of the boats that surrounded our steamer.

Two trains start from Port Said to Suez every day, one in the forenoon and one in the evening. The line as far as Ismailia is a narrow tramway having a gauge of 2ft. 8in.; the cars are consequently both narrow and uncomfortable, and take about three hours to do the journey. On my bidding good-bye to the dragoman I had engaged, he assured me that he was far too devout a Muslim to fleece so pious a pilgrim as myself, and he would not accept a centime more than five francs for the boat, the carriage, and his special services. It was from him that I first heard of the outbreak of cholera in Arabia—a report that was unfortunately confirmed at Suez, whither I journeyed in the discomfort of a dust-storm and a hot easterly wind. We arrived at Ismailia at one o’clock, or thereabouts, having left Port Said at a quarter to ten o’clock. This place, when the canal was being cut, was the headquarters of the workmen; but now it has sunk in importance, many of the buildings having actually fallen in ruins. Some of the managers of the company, however, are still living there, and the best houses in the town are at their disposal. Employment is provided on the canal for some hundred and twenty pilots, most of whom are Greeks and Frenchmen, though a few Englishmen have been recently added to the staff. The railway from Cairo to Suez, which belongs to the Egyptian Government, passes through Ismailia and picks up the passengers for Suez who have travelled so far by the Canal Company’s toy line. Henceforward the journey was made in comfort, for the line, though a single one, is a standard British gauge and the train provided with an excellent waggon-restaurant. Nearly all the passengers on board were Arabs and low-class Europeans in the third-class compartments. We stopped at three stations on the way, and every time it happened we were greeted by a weird chorus of Arab song, of which the burden was the “Wondrous names of God and the virtues of His Prophet.” I was somewhat amused to hear the words, “Not I, by God!” in reply to my inquiry as to whether or not a certain Arab would be good enough to fetch a bottle of soda water for me. For I, being unused to the climate, had suffered tortures from thirst in the scorching heat and driving dust-clouds, the intervals between the stages being extremely long and tedious—in fact, it took the train seven hours and a quarter to cover the hundred miles that separate Port Said from Suez. Nor was the prospect of a sort to slake the thirst of the weary pilgrim. All along the line hugs the right bank of the canal, and nothing is to be seen except the soft white sand of the glowing desert, unless it be an occasional patch of green grass or a cluster of date trees, irrigated by the fresh-water canal newly cut in order to conduct the much-needed water from a spot near Cairo to Port Said and Suez, the latter a place which stands in sore want of the cleansing and refreshing element.

On my arrival at the station a dragoman, one of the plagues of Egypt, joined himself to my suite, informing me with glib mendacity that he carried both Arabia and the Land of the Pyramids in his pocket, whereas, as a matter of fact, he had not once left his native town. However, as I could not shake the fellow off, I made the best of a bad bargain by taking him out shopping with me. First, I bought a deep crimson fez with a long black silk tassel and a straw lining. Though it looked both cool and fanciful, and was therefore pleasing to my Oriental eye, I am not certain that a turban would not have been more in keeping with the complete Arab suit which I subsequently purchased. This consisted of a thin linen shirt, a pair of trousers, and two long and graceful robes. The shirt was worn as long as a night-shirt, it had no collar, and the roomy sleeves were left open at the wrists. The trousers were more interesting, and of a curious shape and an odd material, being made of thin white calico, and so cut that whereas an elephant’s thigh could scarcely fill the ample width of the uppermost part, one had the greatest difficulty in slipping the feet through the lower ends which clung tightly round the ankles. As for the two robes, which were long enough to cover the nether garments, the inner one was made of the finest silk, striped in successive colours of red, yellow, and green, and was left entirely open in front, but the left breast overlapped the right, to which it was buttoned from the armpits downwards. The outer habit of a blueish colour served as a cloak to the inner one, was made of the same material, and cut in precisely the same way. No socks were worn, and the shoes were not unlike ordinary slippers, with this exception, that they were turned up at the toes.

On donning this picturesque attire I returned to the Hôtel d’Orient by way of the narrow and filthy bazaars, where my attention was attracted by a band of dancers who were drawing together a crowd of sightseers of every nationality. While one man was cutting his capers in the skin of a Polar bear, a second, tambourine in hand, powdered his face to imitate a European, while a third, got up in guise of a Negro, played with a lively monkey in chains, and three dancing girls with huge artificial moles on their faces completed the company. All these, including the monkey, pranced up and down to the tune vociferated by the women and accompanied on the tambourine by the man with the white face, repeating at intervals the shrill cry of “Hullá-hee-há-há.”

As I sat within the courtyard of the Hotel, listening to the voice of the Greek prima donna who sang nightly to the assembled guests, I could not refrain from smiling within myself at the transformation in my appearance and demeanour which recalled to my memory a line of Obaid Zakani’s satire of “The Mouse and the Cat,” which runs: “Be of good cheer, comrades, the cat has become pious.” These glad tidings were spread abroad by a little mouse that, having hidden itself under the altar of a mosque at Kirmán, overheard the cat reading aloud the passage of repentance, meekly kneeling on its knees. Unfortunately the cat, the symbol of vicious cunning, broke its vows a little time after, and I wondered how far and how long I should succeed in keeping mine.

Next morning I came across a blind Arabian priest patiently waiting on the landing-stage for the departure of the steamer, and in the evening he was still in the self-same spot, kneeling on his prayer-rug and singing aloud the verses of the Kurán in a deep original Arab melody, rosary in hand. His young son was kneeling by his side, listening with downcast eyes to the never-ceasing chants of his father, who knew by heart every word of the sacred book, to say nothing of the saddening elegies of the Arabian traditionists. Like most of the singers of the East, who pour out their rhapsodies all day long in an ever-flowing torrent of melody, he was extremely monotonous, and so I sought to stem the current of his song by entering into conversation with him. On hearing from me that he would be obliged to descend into the hell of the Turkish quarantine and to remain there five days before he could hope to ascend into the pilgrim’s paradise of Mecca, a look of keen distress swept like a cloud over his enraptured countenance. Rising slowly to his feet, he raised his sightless eyes, saying: “God, if it please Him, will provide me with a swift means of transport to His city. We shall meet again.” So confident was his tone that my own misgivings yielded to the hope that I should yet overcome the difficulty of the quarantine. And soon after I was informed that all the first-class passengers on board the last pilgrim boat would be allowed to proceed to their destination without let or hindrance, but the unfortunate deck passengers would have to conform to the regulations. Never was the privilege of wealth and the curse of poverty brought home to the hearts of the weary in a more convincing fashion. The next best thing to being wealthy, I told myself, is to have the prerogatives of wealth thrust upon one.

Having had my passport viséd, I booked a berth and went on board the Khedivieh steamer, which completed the distance between Suez and Jiddah—some six hundred and forty-five nautical miles—in about eighty hours. At ordinary times these steamers are simply employed on the mail service, one of them leaving Suez for Jiddah every week—generally on Thursday—and another leaving Jiddah for Suez on the same day. Though they practically belong to a British syndicate, they go under the name of Khedivieh steamers. The captain and the chief officers are English, whereas the crew are Egyptians and Lascars. During the pilgrimage steamers run frequently between the two ports, and in the year 1902 not less than two hundred thousand pilgrims, I was told, had landed at Jiddah, the majority of whom embarked at Suez. Among these numbers must be reckoned the eighty thousand Russian subjects from the Caucasus and Central Asia, who, for the first time since they came under the Russian rule, had been granted the privilege of undertaking the ancient pilgrimage. Rumour credited them with being the main cause of the cholera that year. If only the half of what I heard about them were true their pollution would still beggar description.

The cruise in the Red Sea is not so interesting as that in the Mediterranean. Save an occasional ragged rock rising from the yellow waters, or a flight of white birds over the steamer, nothing was to be seen from hour to hour.

When we sighted the port of Jiddah, which I shall describe by-and-by, we were told to put on our ihrám, or sacred habit, before entering the holy territory on our way to Mecca. As a preliminary, I at once removed my Arabian costume, washed my hands, up to the elbow, and my feet, up to the knees; I afterwards shaved the upper lip, leaving the fresh-grown, unsightly beard to its own fate. Then, having performed the prescribed ablution of the head, I closed my eyes and expressed, with the tongue of my heart, the earnest desire to cast off the garb of unrighteousness and pride and to put on the winding-sheet of humility and of passive obedience to God’s will. Last of all, that I might be worthy to visit His house, I prostrated myself on the prayer-rug and said aloud the following formula of devotion: “O Almighty God, Thou art without a mate; I praise Thy sovereign grace with all my heart; Thou art pure and everlasting;” then I repeated three times: “O Lord, Thou art without a mate,” adding, “I praise, O Lord, Thy apostle Muhammad and his disciples and his family; in like manner, I also praise our father Abraham and his house.” The next thing I said was: “Send down upon me, O Lord, the healthful spirit of Thy satisfaction; open unto me, I beseech Thee, the gates of Paradise, and shelter me from the fire of Hell.” And this petition I also repeated three times. I was then ready to don the sacred habit.

Now, my ihrám, which I had bought at Suez, consisted of two thin woollen wrappers and a pair of sandals. One wrapper was tied about the middle and allowed to fall all round to the ankles, while the other was thrown over the shoulders, leaving my head and the forearms bare. Both wrappers were spotlessly white, and had neither seam nor hem. The sandal was a kind of shoe, consisting of a sole fastened to the foot by means of a tie which passed between the large toe and the first toe of the foot; it left uncovered both the instep and the heel. This sacred habit was worn by all pilgrims during the four days preceding the Hájj Day. While they have it on they must neither hunt nor fowl, though they are allowed to fish—a doubtful privilege in a dry land. This precept, according to Ahmad Ebn Yûsuf, is so strictly observed that nothing will induce pilgrims to kill so much as a flea. We are told by Al Beidáwí, however, that there are some noxious animals that they have permission to kill during the pilgrimage, such animals, for instance, as kites, ravens, scorpions, mice, and dogs given to bite. Pilgrims must keep a constant watch over their words and their actions so long as they wear the sacred habit. Not a single abusive word must be uttered; all obscene discourse and all converse with women must be avoided; and not a single woman’s face must be seen, save that of a wife, a sister, or a cousin-german, i.e., a sister’s or a brother’s daughter. The men, as I have said, must now doff their sewn clothes and must keep both their faces and their heads uncovered; but the woman must be, as it were, hermetically sealed in their stitched cloaks and veils. The only part of their bodies that they have the right to expose, if they like, is the palms of their hands. For the rest, they must not travel alone, but must be accompanied by a man who may lawfully see them unveiled.

Poor pilgrims! They suffered from right and left. First came the blood-suckers’ passport picnic. Here the pilgrim was plagued to death with questions that the most cursory perusal of his safe-conduct had rendered unnecessary. “Where do you come from? When did you leave? How did you get here? What are your intentions? Why this? How that? When the other?” The poorer pilgrims complained that they were positively fleeced on the most frivolous pretexts. “Your passport is not properly written; you must pay forty-eight piastres,” and so on.

Then the customs’ authorities emerged. “Will you walk into my parlour?” these mosquitoes said to the pilgrims. To the imaginative mind the buzzing which filled the room spelt the word bakhshísh. Woe betide the pilgrim who did not so interpret the sound! All these officials, as a Persian would say, had arms longer than their legs—in other words, they reached out an itching palm to every pilgrim, and, casting an appealing smile on him, seemed as though they would ask him to tickle it with the counter-irritant of a “tip.” They opened my kit-bags and turned everything topsy-turvy before I had time to bridle their official zeal in the customary way. Among the contents were an English newspaper and a novel, and these were promptly confiscated for no other reason than that I had read them both. I cannot say that I made them a present of my purse by way of pouring coals of fire on their heads. It was otherwise in my case. I tied my purse-strings a little tighter, and responded to their bakhshísh-coveting smiles with a smile equally bakhshísh-coveting. It is wise, when you know the ropes, to husband your resources till you reach the interior, for there your comfort in travelling will depend on your having a purse well lined. By following this rule, I was not so ill-prepared as I might otherwise have been to meet the claims on my charity of the professional beggars who waylaid my every step in the quaint old city of Jiddah.

Such a scene! Crowds of Arabs were lying on the filthy ground, which, despite the heat, seemed strangely damp. Some were praying, some were snoring, others were smoking, many were wrestling in the mud, but by far the greater number of them merely dreamed away the passing hours, too idle even to open their eyes. You might stay from sunrise to sunset by the side of the more meditative among them without their showing the least signs of life. How differently constituted are these loafers from the free-born Arabs of the desert! The women held themselves somewhat aloof from the men, and sat smoking their pipes, or chatting like magpies, in groups of three or four. The sight of a new face seemed to have lost its attraction for them, or perhaps they had grown weary of criticising the gait and the appearance of the incoming pilgrims. Having now seen a good many of them, however, as it were by stealth, I think I may say with confidence that among the Arabs of Hejaz the men are far better-looking than the women. This is mostly the women’s own fault, for they ruin the beauty of their faces by tattooing their chins. Were it not for this unsightly custom, peculiar to the Arabs, the womenfolk, though corpulent, might be regarded as comely. The men, on the other hand, are fairly handsome, being tall and lean, and having high-bridged noses, flashing black eyes, and lofty foreheads. I am speaking more especially of the wild Arabs of the desert and not of the townsmen, whose faces, however handsome they may be, are too often marred by an expression of cupidity and cunning.

Jiddah, though dirty, is a very picturesque city. It has narrow serpentine streets which are rarely more than seven or eight feet wide, and is surrounded by five turreted walls of great antiquity rising to a height of twelve feet or so. Of these walls the northern measures in length about seven hundred and thirty-one yards, the southern seven hundred and sixty-nine, the eastern five hundred and eighty-five, the western six hundred and twenty-four, and the south-eastern some three hundred and seventy-nine. There are about three thousand houses in the city, most of which are built of limestone and shut out from the street by walls which sometimes conceal the roofs of the houses within. Here and there a small window in the surrounding walls affords ventilation to the house. It is only a few years since a big well was dug at a place called Bashtar, some two miles distant from the city, the water of which is conducted by means of underground passages. This well bears the name of the reigning Sultan of Turkey. Pure drinking water being scarce, sakkás or water-carriers are seen about the streets carrying the precious liquid on their backs in big leathern bags. Of recent years several mosques and caravanserais and one steam mill have been erected outside the city walls. The governor’s residence, together with the post-office and almost all of the more modern buildings, lies outside the walls, facing the Red Sea. The shops, raised not more than a foot above the ground, are about two yards and a half in width and some three yards deep in the interior. Butchers, grocers, fruiterers, and linen drapers are crowded together much as they are in an English street. The babble within the bazaar is beyond description. Your first conjecture is that a free fight is about to begin between the tradesman and his customer; but, on making ready to intervene in the cause of peace, you find to your pleasure or your chagrin that the vociferous couple shake hands, first by touching the right hand and then by raising both hands to the right eye, after which the shopkeeper makes tender inquiries as to his customer’s health, and then the bargaining begins. It took me over an hour to buy a few yards of cloth. The ancient draper was too lazy to reach out for the stuff himself, so he ordered his boy to bestir himself in my interests. The cloth being handed to him, the draper fingered it caressingly, saying: “The cloth is soft to the touch, its splendour dazzles the eyes! Such an exquisite material has not been seen in this market for years!” The cloth was to my liking, and so I made haste to ask the price of it. The draper shook his head reprovingly. Then he said: “Hurry and haste belong to Satan: I usually sell this cloth at thirty piastres a yard to my customers, but to you I will sell it for twenty-five, because you have found favour in my sight.” I made him a counter-bid of five piastres a yard in order to cut the barter short. Whereupon the draper, nodding in admiration of my guile, gazed around him for close on five minutes. When he opened his mouth at last it was to say in his most winning voice: “My good sir, since you are looking so well, so handsome, and so distinguished, I will part with this priceless material at the trifling cost to yourself of fifteen piastres a yard.” “Not so,” I replied. “Since you are a bright old man I will increase my favour in your sight by adding a piastre to my last bid; in other words, I now offer you six piastres a yard.” The draper raised his hand to Heaven. “That is impossible! I ask pardon of God.” I now turned on my heel and walked away. He called me back at once. “Sir,” he said, “I would not have you leave me in displeasure. Give whatever you like, the cloth is yours. I am your sacrifice.” I retraced my steps. “Nonsense,” I returned; “how is it possible for me to give what I like for the stuff, since you are the tradesman and know its proper value?” The old man smiled, and said, “Honoured sir, the lowest price I can possibly accept for this material is ten piastres a yard.” It was now my turn to smile. “Sir,” I replied, “I have no wish to offend you by leaving your shop, and so I will buy the cloth from you for seven piastres a yard instead of going to your rival yonder, who has offered to sell me some at six and a half piastres.”

The draper then handed me a stool, and said, smiling, “You are not easy to deal with. Come, sit down, and smoke this hukah, and we shall not part in anger.” So I sat down in front of the shop, and while I sucked meditatively at the pipe he handed to me, the stuff was measured, cut, and folded, the tacit understanding between us being that we would meet half-way, namely at eight piastres and a half. By the time I had finished my smoke the material was ready for me, and so I lost no time in returning to the hotel.

The harvest season of the shopkeepers is during the journeying months. Their most striking characteristic in the eyes of a Persian pilgrim is that they all wear white beards. The reason of this probably is that young shopkeepers would stand not a ghost of a chance of competing successfully with their elderly rivals. Moreover, all greybeards in the Muhammadan religion are entitled to receive special veneration from the young. Another reason is that nearly all the young men are employed by the pilgrims as guides, as servants, and as drivers.

Everything moves slowly in these Arab towns. You will break the laws of good breeding if you walk fast there. Consider the camel of the desert, how he walks; he hurries not, neither does he make a sound: so take this finnikin creature as your model and form your gait on the camel’s. All Orientals pin implicit faith in the doctrine of “slow but sure,” and when they give you some work they recommend you to be “slow over it,” believing that a thing done smartly is not often done well.