port of his wardrobe;—another (and he had many imitators) carried snow with him to cool sherbet upon the road. Egypt, however, sometimes vied with the luxurious pomp of Bagdad; for, in the year of the Hegira 719, the Sultan of that country carried with him five hundred camels, for the transport of sweetmeats and confectionary only; and two hundred and eighty, for pomegranates and other fruits. In his travelling larder were one thousand geese, and three thousand fowls. Ludovico Verthema, an Italian, who journeyed in the East, A. D. 1503, and went with the Syrian caravan to Mecca, says that the caravan of Cairo consisted of sixty-four thousand camels* At the present day, both the number of persons making the pilgrimage, and the splendour with which it is conducted, are greatly lessened; but the caravan still offers the same remarkable mixture of pomp and misery, of abundance and want, of superstition and licentiousness, which appear to have prevailed from the earliest times. Not one tenth part of the caravan are real pilgrims; but the motley group is made up of the attendants of the sacred camel, people attached to the Pasha, soldiers, servants of soldiers, merchants, pedlars, camel-drivers, coffee and pipe-waiters, Bedouins, and large numbers of licentious women, called dancing girls. The richer pilgrims put themselves under the protection of a Mekowem (one who speculates in furnishing camels and provisions to the Hadj); and these persons, unless they become bankrupt before the contract is completed, prepare refreshments for their customers, pack their goods, load their camels, and provide a man to lead each beast during the night marches. But the poorer pilgrims, who cannot afford to pay for these accommodations, are persecuted by the Mekowem, who fee the Pasha to connive at their injustice. They are thus obliged to march in the rear of the caravan, to encamp on the *Hakluyt's Voyages.

worst ground, and to fill their water-skins the last. They have no protection from the soldiers, who rob them in the night, and even sometimes murder them; and the pilfering Bedouins keep them in perpetual alarm for their little property. It is no wonder, therefore, that many hundreds of these poor pilgrims every year perish of fatigue and terror; while the rich Hadjys sleep comfortably in their camel-litters, surrounded, as far as is possible in a desert of forty days' journey, with every gratification of luxury*.

the

The Hadj caravan starts from Cairo twenty days after the great fast of the Ramadhan is ended. Purchas has given an elaborate description of its ancient splendours. "The caravan," he says, "is divided into three parts; the foreward, the maine bataille, and the rereward. The foreward containeth about a third part of the people. Within a quarter of a mile followeth the maine bataille, with their ordnance, gunners, and archers; chief physician, with his ointments and medicines for the sick, and camels for them to ride on. Next goeth the fairest camel that may be found in the Turk's dominions, decked with cloth of gold and silk, and carrieth a little chest, in form of the Israelitish ark, con‐ taining in it the Alcoran, all written with great letters of gold, bound between two tables of massive gold. This chest is covered with silke during the voyage; but, at their entering into Mecca and Medina, it is covered with cloth of gold, adorned with jewels. This camel is compassed about with Arabian singers and musicians, singing alway, and playing upon instruments. After this follow fifteene other most faire camels, every one carrying one of the above said vestures, being covered from top to toe with silke. Behind these, goe the twentie camels which carry the captaines money and provision. After followeth the standard of the Great Signior, accompanied with musicians and souldiers, and behind these, * See Burckhardt's Syria and Arabia.

lesse than a mile, followeth the rereward, the greatest part pilgrimes: the marchants, for securitie, going before; for in this voyage it is needfull and usuall, that the captaines bestow presents, garments, and turbans, upon the chiefe Arabians, to give them free passage, receiving sometimes, by pilferings, some damage notwithstanding."

66

Mr. Parsons, who saw the pilgrim caravan set out from Cairo about forty years ago, has given a programme of the procession, drawn up with all the precision of a herald, and which occupies ten pages of his quarto work. The cavalcade was six hours in passing him. The most striking appearance to an European must have been the camels, in every variety of splendid trappings, laden with provisions, and clothes, and cookery apparatus, and water-skins, and tents, and artillery, and holy Sheiks, and Mamelukes. There were camels "with two brass fieldpieces each"-others "with bells and streamers"others "with men beating kettle-drums"-others COvered with purple velvet"-others "with men walking by their sides, playing on flutes and flageolets"handsomely ornamented about their necks, their bridles being studded with silver, intermixed with glass beads of all colours, and ostrich feathers on their foreheads"-and last of all "the sacred camel, an extraordinary large camel, with a fine bridle studded with jewels and gold, and led by two holy sheiks, in green, a square house or chapel on his back." In addition to these camel splendours there were horses with every variety of caparison; mamelukes, and pikemen, and janissaries, and agas, and the Emir Hadgy, (commander of the pilgrimage) in robes of satin-to say nothing of numberless "buffoons playing many pranks.' Mr. Parsons sums up the splendour of this pilgrim caravan by

others

66

declaring that "it is by much the grander exhibition than the spectacle of the Lord Mayor and Alderman going in procession through the City of London;"--but this may be doubted by some as the exaggeration of a traveller, while others may deem it impossible!

Differing from the usual practice of commercial caravans, the pilgrimage is performed chiefly by night. The caravan generally moves about four o'clock in the afternoon, and travels without stopping till an hour or two after sun-rise. A large supply of torches is carried from Cairo, to be lighted during the hours of darkness. The Bedouins, who convey provisions for the troops, travel by day only, and in advance of the caravan. The watering-places on the route are regularly established. Each is supplied with a large tank, and protected by soldiers who reside in a castle by the well, throughout the year. On parts of the route the wells are frequent, and the water good; but on others three days of the journey frequently intervene between one watering-place and another, -and the fountain is often brackish. When the Cairo caravan is completely assembled, and the formalities which we have just described are gone through, the great body of travellers begin to move, the stations of the different parties of Hadjys, according to their provinces and towns, being appointed, and rigidly observed throughout the march. This order is determined by the geographical proximity of the place from which each party comes. At Adjeroud, where the Egyptian caravan halts on the second day's march, it is supplied with water from Suez; and here it reposes a day and a night, to prepare for a forced march of three days and two nights, through a region where there is no water, the desert of El Tyh, which nearly extends from the

head of one gulf of the Red Sea to the other-that is, from Suez to Akaba. The Hadj route is circuitous. It is here that the privations both of men and quadrupeds commence. The splendid trappings of the camels, their velvets and their bells, have lost their attraction; but their power of endurance becomes the safety of the pilgrims: while the richly caparisoned horse, impatient of thirst, and more easily subdued by fatigue, is more frequently a burthen to the caravan than an advantage. The route of the Egyptian caravan, after it passes the Akaba, lies by the shores of the Red Sea for nearly six hundred miles; and, therefore, it cannot properly be said at any time after the first ten days' march to be upon the desert, as the Syrian caravan is for thirty days. But its difficulties are more numerous; and it has to pass regions quite as arid and inhospitable. Every part of Arabia is covered with sandy plains; and when the mountain steeps are crossed, the long extended valleys rarely offer water. The Arabic language is rich in words expressing every variety of desert, differing from each other by very slight shades of meaning: thus, they have terms descriptive of a plain-a plain in the mountain—a plain covered with herbs—a naked sandy desert-a stony desert-a desert with little spots of pasturage-a desert without water*. Although the caravan route from Cairo to Mecca presents, with the exception of the desert El Tyh, none of those enormous wastes, like the Great Southern Desert of Arabia, "where the Arabs have only the sun and the stars to direct their way;" nor is, like the Libyan desert, a sea without waters, an earth without solidity, disdaining to hold a foot-print as a testimony of subjectiont," there are many tracts,

66

* See Humboldt's Voyage, tom. vi. Note to p. 67. + Purchas.