The Red Sea to starboard, where Africa rises wild and grim, is a dangerous shore, requiring lighthouses, which it has not. The morning after, we could see Mount Sinai lone in the Tih Desert. In my husband's Arab days, he landed at Tur, and bathed at Hammam Musa on his way to Mecca. On the other side is the Gulf of Akabah the stormy, and Richard at this time (1876) was brewing his project of the Midian mines, whose gold he had discovered twenty-five years before. He then pointed out to me Yambu, the Port of Medinah, where he was in his pilgrimage, and the winding valleys that lead to it, and Richard asked the pilot about Sa'ad, the Shaykh of the Harb Bedawi, the robber-chief of the Jebel el Fikrah, who attacked Richard's caravan going to Mecca, and he replied that "that dog has since gone to Jehannum."
Jeddah is the most lovely town I have ever seen, and by moonlight quite ghostly. It looks like an ancient model carved in old ivory. It was here my husband came by land from Mecca, after the pilgrimage, and embarked in 1853. Mecca lies in a valley between those high mountains at the back. Mr. Gustavus Wylde, the Vice-Consul, the son of our old friend Mr. Henry Wylde, of the F.O., sent a boat and a kawwás to bring us off, and insisted on our remaining, the eight days that we were to anchor there, at the Consulate, which we gladly accepted, and I think it was the pleasantest eight days I ever remember. It was a bachelor house, consisting of five men. The Consulate was made of white coralline, with brown wood shutters; jalousies and balconies of fanciful shape, mostly all crooked, but as finely carved as delicate lace. There was a room at the top, a sort of belvedere with windows opening to all sides with delicious views, which I called "The Eagle's Nest," and everything was a combination of Eastern and European comfort. They always mounted us, and we used to ride out into the desert by the Hajj way. It was very tantalizing to find one's self so near Mecca—on one occasion about twenty-five miles—and to have to turn round and come back; but two Americans and two English had gone up for a lark, and had got into trouble. Richard could have gone, but it was not exactly the time to show my blue eyes and broken Arabic upon holy ground, so we returned through the Meccan Gate and the bazars, which are half-dark and half-lit.
The population, except at the Hajj time, including the eleven villages in the plain, is estimated at eighteen, at twenty, at forty thousand. There were only ten resident Christians—European officials or merchants—no ladies. Three of these are Consuls—France, England, and Netherlands. I need not say that we saw everything in Jeddah, and all around it, except Mecca. To have taken these rides, to have walked through the Mecca Gate, to have wandered about the bazars in 1853, when my husband went to Mecca, would have cost us our lives. I cannot tell how I enjoyed the bazars; they are larger and cleaner than Damascus, but I think less rich, and even less picturesque, and my description of the Hajj of Damascus in my "Inner Life of Syria" would do equally well for both. They swarm with a picturesque and variegated mob from all parts of the world; every Eastern Moslem under the sun is represented. There are camels, donkeys, takhtarawán (litters), pilgrims, and Bedawi in quantities, but very few horses. We felt happy in this atmosphere, and the Arabic sounds so musical and so familiar. Here is the open-air mosque where the prayers of the Ramazan are recited. Here the pariah dogs are fiercer than in all other quarters. Here are the pits where the lime is burnt, the fuel and charcoal brought in by the Bedawi, the street of wattled matted booths, where meat and provisions are sold; this, side by side with the great bazar, showing the splendour and misery of the East. Tall-capped, long-bearded Persians are selling fine carpets, cutlery, precious stones—chiefly turquoises and gulf-pearls—and choice water-pipes. Those from Yemen are offering weapons studded with the gold coins of the Venetian Republic, Yemen guns, perfumed coffee, delicate filagree work, and chiselled silver. The pale-faced Turk, in his tarbush and furs in spite of the heat, contemptuously offers arms, jewellery, rugs, and perfumes. Short, thin, dark Indians in white cotton offer silks, dried goods, spices, drugs, tea, rice, and building timber. The Nizam officer talks in a dark corner to the sooty-faced Zanzibari slave-dealer, to settle the terms of some fair purchase. The vulturine Takruri from Western Inner Africa and the Bengali beggar scowl at each other, and the dervishes are singing to the tambourine, and offering a brass pot for contributions.
Turcomans wearing huge mushroom-like caps of Astrachan wool, Caucasians, Central Asians with wadded skull caps, retail to crabbed-faced and spectacled scribes. The tall sinewy Kurd, with gold-threaded kuffíyyeh veiling his dark face, shaven chin, and up-twisted moustachio, is a sheep-dealer and wrangling with the lamb-sellers. The tall, lanky Sawakin Moslem, with sphinx-like curls hanging to his shoulders and over his brow, the upper hair forming a mighty tuft, is selling the mother-o'-pearl fished on the coast. An Egyptian Fellah urges a small, neat horse through the crowd, crying his price—twelve napoleons. The savage Somali offers little parcels of gums, incense, and myrrh, the produce of the wild hills.
Strings of camels, from the high-bred delúl to the diminutive charity-made beast laden with grain and led by an equally miserable Bedawin, who dresses in a long blouse stained yellow with saffron or acacia bark, and kerchief bound to the head with ropes. They all wear the jambíyeh (dagger), either long and straight or short and curved. They carry the crooked stick of the wilderness and the dwarf spear with tapering head. Skeleton donkeys, holed with many a raw, and laden with water-skins, are cruelly driven along by a peasant lad in blue rags; but through the whole crowd we can detect our Shámis, or Damascenes, by the animal of better breed, ridden well by a huge Haji, whose peculiar aba, or cloak, proclaims him to be an Abu Shám, or father of Syria.
There is the surly, rough Slav Turk from Europe, in the Slav garb, swaggering, with his belt full of weapons, past the natty sneering Hejazi, who testily mutters "Ghásim" (Johnny Raw). This dandy affects tender colours—a white turban bound round an embroidered surah cap, a cashmere shawl, a caftan of fine pink cloth, a green worked waistcoat of silk and cotton, a silver-hilted dagger, and elaborately embroidered slippers. There is the pauper Javanese with his pock-marked face, Chinese features, and crooked-bladed Malay dagger; the Jedáwi, selling at auction white soft coral, the produce of the Red Sea, bought by pilgrims in memoriam of their pilgrimage, and black coral-like bog oak, found in thirteen fathoms of water some way down the coast. And lastly brushed by us four brawny Hayramis, the hammals, or porters, of these regions—men even stouter and stronger than the far-famed Armenian porters of Constantinople, who carry a lean corpse, whose toes are tied together; and close by us are seven little negroes with oil-black skins, dressed in snowy sheets, who cast yearning looks at us, for they are for sale.
The bazar at this moment is a panorama of Eastern life, whose costumes, various types, difference of language, manners, and customs form a veritable kaleidoscope. The dry heat of the tropical sun darting through the plank joints, makes the pleasant "coolth" of the coffee-houses and the bubble of the water-pipes refreshing. Every rug and perfume of the Orient, of pipe and kitchen, assail the nose; the sounds of the grunt of the camel, the howl of the trampled dog, the chaff of the boys, the chant of the fakir, the blare of the trumpets, the roll of the drum, the blessing, the curse, the shrill cry, the hoarse expostulation, the babel of tongues, distant voices like the hum of insects on a drowsy summer noon. Every one is armed to the teeth, but no one ever draws a weapon.
At sunset the crowd melts away. The bazar when they light up at dusk is wonderfully picturesque; then the wealthy pilgrim retires to his caravansarai, the middle class to their tents, the majority to their carpets and rugs and coffers, spread in the open street. By eight o'clock the bazar is as silent as the desert, the moon rises, and the prayer cry of the Muezzin charms the ear (this one is peculiar to Jeddah). Richard and I went to the khan, where he lived as one of these very pilgrims in 1853, and stood under the Minaret he sketched in his book, to hear the "call to prayer."