After Some Time,
However, I Found A Man Who Offered Me A Ready-Furnished Room:
Of this I
took possession, and having no servant, boarded with the owner.
He and
his family, consisting of a wife and two children, retired into a small,
open court-yard, on the side of my room. The landlord was a poor man
from Medina,
MEKKA
[p.100] and by profession a Metowaf, or cicerone. Although his mode of
living was much below that of even the second class of Mekkawys, yet it
cost me fifteen piastres a day; and I found, after we parted, that
several articles of dress had been pilfered from my travelling sack; but
this was not all: on the feast-day he invited me to a splendid supper,
in company with half a dozen of his friends, in my room, and on the
following morning he presented me with a bill for the whole expense of
this entertainment.
The thousands of lamps lighted during Ramadhan in the great mosque,
rendered it the nightly resort of all foreigners at Mekka; here they
took their walk, or sat conversing till after midnight. The scene
presented altogether a spectacle which (excepting the absence of women)
resembled rather an European midnight assemblage, than what I should
have expected in the sanctuary of the Mohammedan religion. The night
which closes Ramadhan, did not present those brilliant displays of
rejoicing that are seen in other parts of the East; and the three
subsequent days of the festival are equally devoid of public amusements.
A few swinging machines were placed in the streets to amuse children,
and some Egyptian jugglers exhibited their feats to multitudes assembled
in the streets; but little else occurred to mark the feast, except a
display of gaudy dresses, in which the Arabians surpass both Syrians and
Egyptians.
I paid the visit, customary on occasion of this feast, to the Kadhy, and
at the expiration of the third day, (on the 15th of September,) set out
for Djidda, to complete my travelling equipments, which are more easily
procured there than at Mekka. On my way to the coast, I was nearly made
prisoner at Bahra by a flying corps of Wahabys. My stay at Djidda was
prolonged to three weeks, chiefly in consequence of sore legs; a disease
very prevalent on this unhealthy coast, where every bite of a gnat, if
neglected, becomes a serious wound.
About the middle of October I returned to Mekka, accompanied by a slave
whom I had purchased. This boy had been in the caravan with which I went
from the Black Country to Sowakin, and was
[p.101] quite astonished at seeing me in a condition so superior to that
in which he had before known me. I took with me a camel-load of
provisions, mostly flour, biscuit, and butter, procured in Djidda at one
third of the price demanded at Mekka, where, immediately on my arrival,
I hired decent apartments in a quarter of the town not much frequented,
called Haret el Mesfale.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 74 of 350
Words from 38236 to 38743
of 182297
