d listen to him; publishing his Doctrine
among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this
place and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger
attended him. His powerful relations protected Mohammed himself; but by
and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek
refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid
plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mohammed to death with their
own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mohammed is
not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one
of the dismallest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly
hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than
once it seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a straw,
some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mohammed and his
Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was
not to end so.

In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded
against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take
his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer,
Mohammed fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some
adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "_Medinat al Nabi_, the
City of the Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some 200 miles off,
through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as
we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The whole East
dates its era from this Flight, _Hegira_ as they name it: the Year 1 of
this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mohammed's life. He
was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one;
his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find hope in
his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless for him. It
is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mohammed had professed to
publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. But
now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not
only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, the deep cry of his
heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it,--the wild
Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab. If
the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to be of
infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen to