The same
manœuvre made him try Arabic; still he obtained no answer.
Then he
grumbled out good Hindustani. That also failing, he tried successively
Pushtu, Armenian, English, French, and Italian. At last I could “keep a
stiff lip” no longer; at every change of dialect his emphasis beginning
with “Then who the d— are you?” became more emphatic. I turned upon him in
Persian, and found that he had been a pilot, a courier, and a servant
to Eastern tourists, and that he had visited England, France, and
Italy, the Cape, India, Central Asia, and China. We then chatted in
English, which Haji Akif spoke well, but with all manner of courier’s
phrases; Haji Abdullah so badly, that he was counselled a course of
study. It was not a little strange to hear such phrases as “Come ’p, Neddy,”
and “Cre nom d’un baudet,” almost within earshot of the tomb of Ishmael, the
birthplace of Mohammed, and the Sanctuary of Al-Islam.
[p.262] About eight P.M. we passed the Alamayn, which define the
Sanctuary in this direction. They stand about nine miles from Meccah,
and near them are a coffee-house and a little oratory, popularly known
as the Sabil Agha Almas. On the road, as night advanced, we met long
strings of camels, some carrying litters, others huge beams, and others
bales of coffee, grain, and merchandise. Sleep began to weigh heavily
upon my companions’ eye-lids, and the boy Mohammed hung over the flank of
his donkey in a most ludicrous position.
About midnight we reached a mass of huts, called Al-Haddah. Ali Bey
places it eight leagues from Jeddah. At “the Boundary” which is considered
to be the half-way halting-place, Pilgrims must assume the religious
garb,[FN#4] and Infidels travelling to Taif are taken off the Meccan
road into one leading Northward to Arafat. The settlement is a
collection of huts and hovels, built with sticks and reeds, supporting
brushwood and burned and blackened palm leaves. It is maintained for
supplying pilgrims with coffee and water. Travellers speak with horror
of its heat during the day; Ali Bey, who visited it twice, compares it
to a furnace. Here the country slopes gradually towards the sea, the
hills draw off, and every object denotes departure from the Meccan
plateau. At Al-Haddah we dismounted for an hour’s halt. A coffee-house
supplied us with mats, water-pipes, and other necessaries; we then
produced a basket of provisions, the parting gift of the kind Kabirah,
and, this late supper concluded, we lay down to doze.
After half an hour’s halt had expired, and the donkeys were saddled, I
shook up with difficulty the boy Mohammed, and induced him to mount. He
was, to use his own expression, “dead from sleep”; and we had
[p.263] scarcely advanced an hour, when, arriving at another little
coffee-house, he threw himself upon the ground, and declared it
impossible to proceed.
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