twelve men, besides camels and other beasts of burden. My companions seemed to consider this questionable affair a most gallant exploit.
The next night (July 24th) was severe. The path lay up rocky hill and down stony vale. A tripping and stumbling dromedary had been substituted for my better animal, and the consequences may be imagined.
The sun had nearly risen before I shook off the lethargic effects of such a march. All around me were hurrying their beasts, regardless of rough ground, and not a soul spoke a word to his neighbour. “Are there robbers in sight?” was the natural question. “No,” responded the boy Mohammed. “They are walking with their eyes; they will presently sight their homes.”
Half an hour afterwards we came to a huge mudarrij, or flight of steps, roughly cut in a line of black scoriaceous basalt. Arrived at the top, we passed through a lane of dark lava with steep banks on both sides, and in a few minutes a full view of the Holy City suddenly opened upon us. It was like a vision in “The Arabian Nights.” We halted our camels as if by word of command. All dismounted, in imitation of the pious of old, and sat down, jaded and hungry as we were, to feast our eyes on the “country of date-trees” which looked so passing fair after the “salt stony land.” As we looked eastward the sun rose out of the horizon of blue and pink hill, the frontier of Nejd staining the spacious plains with
gold and purple. The site of El Medinah is in the western edge of the highlands which form the plateau of Central Arabia. On the left side, or north, was a tall grim pile of porphyritic rock, the celebrated Mount Ohod, with a clump of verdure and a dome or two nestling at its base. Round a whitewashed fortalice founded upon a rock clustered a walled city, irregularly oval, with tall minarets enclosing a conspicuous green dome. To the west and south lay a large suburb and long lines of brilliant vegetation piercing the tawny levels. I now understood the full value of a phrase in the Moslem ritual—“And when the pilgrim’s eyes shall fall upon the trees of El Medinah, let him raise his voice and bless the Prophet with the choicest blessings.”
In all the panorama before us nothing was more striking, after the desolation through which we had passed, than the gardens and orchards about the town. My companions obeyed the command with the most poetical exclamations, bidding the Prophet “live for ever whilst the west wind bloweth gently over the hills of Nejd and the lightning flasheth bright in the firmament of El Hejaz.”
We then remounted and hurried through the Bab El Ambari, the gate of the western suburb. Crowded by relatives and friends, we passed down a broad, dusty street, pretty well supplied with ruins, into an open space called Barr El Manakhah, or “place where camels are made to kneel.” Straight forward a line leads directly into the Bab El Misri, the Egyptian gate of
the city. But we turned off to the right, and after advancing a few yards we found ourselves at the entrance of our friend Shaykh Hamid’s house. He had preceded us to prepare for our reception.
No delay is allowed in the ziyarat, or visitation of the haram, or holy place, which received the mortal remains of the Arab Prophet. We were barely allowed to breakfast, to perform the religious ablution, and to change our travel-soiled garments. We then mounted asses, passed through the Egyptian, or western, gate, and suddenly came upon the mosque. It is choked up with ignoble buildings, and as we entered the “Dove of Mercy” I was not impressed by the spectacle.
The site of the Prophet’s mosque—Masjid el Nabashi, as it is called—was originally a graveyard shaded by date-trees. The first walls were of adobe, or unbaked brick, and the recently felled palm-trunks were made into pillars for the leaf-thatched roof. The present building, which is almost four centuries old, is of cut stone, forming an oblong of four hundred and twenty feet by three hundred and forty feet. In the centre is a spacious uncovered area containing the Garden of Our Lady Fatimah—a railed plot of ground bearing a lote-tree and a dozen palms. At the south-east angle of this enclosure, under a wooden roof with columns, is the Prophet’s Well, whose water is hard and brackish. Near it meets the City Academy, where in the cool mornings and evenings