“Let us now visit the interior, where the most conspicuous object is an oblong square building, the walls of which face the cardinal points: its dimensions are twenty-seven by seventeen yards. The walls are fronted with a kind of freestone, each slab being cut of the same size, and the whole so beautifully put together that I endeavored in vain to insert the blade of a small penknife between them. The outer, unpolished surface is covered with small chisel-marks, which the Bedouins have mistaken for writing. From the extreme care displayed in the construction of this building, I have no doubt that it is a temple, and my disappointment at finding the interior filled up with the ruins of the fallen roof was very great. Had it remained entire, we might have obtained some clew to guide us in our researches respecting the form of religion professed by the earlier Arabs. Above and beyond this building there are several other edifices, with nothing peculiar in their form or appearance.
“In no portion of the ruins did we succeed in tracing any remains of arches or columns, nor could we discover on their surface any of those fragments of pottery, colored glass, or metals, which are always found in old Egyptian towns, and which I also saw in those we discovered on the northwest coast of Arabia. Except the attempts to deface the inscriptions, there is no other appearance of the buildings having suffered from any ravages besides those of time; and owing to the dryness of the climate, as well as the hardness of the material, every stone, even to the marking of the chisel, remains as perfect as the day it was hewn. We were anxious to ascertain if the Arabs had preserved any tradition concerning the building, but they refer them, like other Arabs, to their pagan ancestors. ‘Do you believe,’ said one of the Bedouins to me upon my telling him that his ancestors were then capable of greater works than themselves, ‘that these stones were raised by the unassisted hands of the Kafirs? No! no! They had devils, legions of devils (God preserve us from them!), to aid them.’”
On his return to the sea, which occupied a day and a half, Wellsted was kindly treated by the natives, and suffered only from the intense heat. The vessel was fortunately waiting at the appointed place. Since the journey was made (in 1836) Baron von Wrede, a German traveller, has succeeded in exploring a portion of Hadramaut, penetrating as far as Wady Doan, a large and populous valley, more than a hundred miles from the coast. But a thorough exploration of both Yemen and Hadramaut is still wanting, and when made, it will undoubtedly result in many important discoveries.
CHAPTER VII.
Burton’s Pilgrimage.
Captain Richard F. Burton, the discoverer of the great Lake Tanganyika, in Central Africa, first became known to the world by his daring and entirely successful visit to Medina and Mecca, in the year 1853, in the disguise of a Moslem pilgrim. Although his journey was that of Burckhardt, reversed, and he describes the same ceremonies, his account supplies many deficiencies in the narrative of his predecessor, and has the merit of a livelier and more graphic style.
Burton’s original design was to cross the Arabian Peninsula from west to east, as Palgrave has since done, and the Royal Geographical Society was disposed to accept his services. But he failed to obtain a sufficient leave of absence from the East India Company, which only granted him a furlough of one year—a period quite insufficient for the undertaking. He therefore determined to prove at least his fitness for the task, by making the pilgrimage to the holy cities. He was already familiar with the Arabic and Persian languages, and had the advantage of an Eastern cast of countenance.
Like Burckhardt, he assumed an Oriental character at the start, and during the voyage from Southampton to Alexandria was supposed to be a Persian prince. For two or three months he laboriously applied himself in Egypt to the necessary religious studies, joined a society of dervishes, under the name of Shekh Abdullah, kept the severe fast of Ramazan, and familiarized himself with all the orthodox forms of ablution, prayer, and prostration. He gave himself out to be an Afghan by birth, but long absent from his native country, a character which was well adapted to secure him against detection. During his stay in Cairo he made the acquaintance of a boy named Mohammed el-Basyuni, a native of Mecca, who became his companion for the journey, and who seems not to have suspected his real character until the pilgrimage was over.
Having purchased a tent and laid in an ample supply of provisions, with about four hundred dollars in money, he went to Suez about July 1st, with the avowed purpose of proceeding to Mecca by way of Jedda, yet with the secret intention of visiting Medina on the way. Here he became acquainted with a company of pilgrims, whose good-will he secured by small loans of money, and joined them in taking passage in a large Arab boat bound for Yembo. The vessel was called the Golden Wire. “Immense was the confusion,” says Burton, “on the eventful day of our departure. Suppose us standing on the beach, on the morning of a fiery July day, carefully watching our hurriedly-packed goods and chattels, surrounded by a mob of idlers who are not too proud to pick up waifs and strays, while pilgrims rush about apparently mad, and friends are weeping, acquaintances vociferating adieux, boatmen demanding fees, shopmen claiming debts, women shrieking and talking with inconceivable power, children crying—in short, for an hour or so we were in the thick of a human storm. To confound confusion, the boatmen have moored their skiff half a dozen yards away from the shore, lest the porters should be unable to make more than double their fare from the pilgrims.”
They sailed on July 6th, and were five days in reaching the mouth of the Gulf of Akaba. While crossing to the Arabian shore, the pilgrims are accustomed to repeat the following prayer, which is a good example of Moslem invocation: “O Allah, O Exalted, O Almighty, O All-pitiful, O All-powerful, thou art my God, and sufficeth to me the knowledge of it! Glorified be the Lord my Lord, and glorified be the faith my faith! Thou givest victory to whom thou pleaseth, and thou art the glorious, the merciful! We pray thee for safety in our goings-forth and in our standings-still, in our words and our designs, in our dangers of temptation and doubts, and the secret designs of our hearts. Subject unto us this sea, even as thou didst subject the deep to Moses, and as thou didst subject the fire to Abraham, and as thou didst subject the iron to David, and as thou didst subject the wind, and devils, and genii, and mankind to Solomon, and as thou didst subject the moon and El-Burak to Mohammed, upon whom be Allah’s mercy and His blessing! And subject unto us all the seas in earth and heaven, in the visible and in thine invisible worlds, the sea of this life, and the sea of futurity. O thou who reignest over everything, and unto whom all things return, Khyar! Khyar!”