No unbeliever is permitted to enter the sacred enclosure, much less to pollute the Holy Kaaba by his presence. A few infidels disguised as pilgrims, at the risk of their lives, have visited this sacred place.
The preparations for pilgrimage are unique. The pilgrims assemble near Mecca during the holy month and begin the sacred rites by bathing and assuming the sacred garb. This suit consists of two woollen wrappers, one worn around the middle of the body and the other around the shoulders. With bare head and slippers covering neither heel nor instep the pilgrim sets forth on his holy journey.
While wearing this dress he is admonished to bring his thoughts into harmony with the sanctity of the territory he now traverses. He is not to shave, anoint his head, pare his nails, or bathe until the end of the pilgrimage. Among the various rites to be performed after reaching Mecca is walking seven times around the Kaaba, first slowly, then quickly. Before leaving the city the pilgrim drinks water from the holy well, Zemzem.
Many pious pilgrims visit Medina, now the terminus of a railway, before going on to Mecca. This is another of the sacred cities of Islam, since it is the scene of Muhammad's labors after his hegira from Mecca; it also contains his tomb. Formerly no unbeliever was permitted to traverse the streets of Medina or look upon the tomb of the great prophet, but tourists are now allowed within the gates. The city is enclosed by a wall forty feet high which is flanked with thirty towers. Two of its four gates are massive structures with double towers. Like Mecca, Medina is supported chiefly by pilgrims.
CHAPTER X
THE SAHARA
An expanse of land as large as the main body of the United States stretches across the northern part of Africa. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and from the foot of the Atlas Mountains to the Sudan, it is a weird panorama of rock waste—level, rugged, shingly, and mountainous, according to locality. In places only it is penetrated by large and permanently flowing streams. On the eastern borderland the Nile pours a mighty flood, winding a sinuous passage along its self-made flood-plain, the Egypt of history. In the west the Niger has forced its way into the confines of the desert and then, as if rebuffed, turns its course southward.
This great domain of the simoom has every diversity of surface. The higher summits of the Tarso Mountains are eight thousand feet above sea level; the Shott, a chain of salt lakes south of the Atlas Mountains, are about one hundred feet below sea level. The depression in which these lakes is situated probably was once the head of the Gulf of Sidra; but the never-ceasing winds have partly filled the depression, cutting off the head of the gulf in the same manner that wind-blown sands severed what is now Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California. Around the briny lakes are marshes of quicksands, and woe betide the luckless traveller who strays to the one side or the other of the beaten trails. Unless help is at hand, life will have neither joys nor troubles for him after a few brief minutes of struggle.