rsal objects of
worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah
at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be
mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple in his time; that is,
some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some
likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some one
might _see_ it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well
Zemzem; the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a
beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard
earth;--still more so in these hot dry countries, where it is the
first condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name from the
bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the Well
which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the
aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for
thousands of years. A curious object, that Caabah! There it stands at
this hour, in the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly;
'twenty-seven cubits high;' with circuit, with double circuit of
pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps
will be lighted again _this_ night,--to glitter again under the stars.
An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the _Keblah_ of all
Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of innumerable
praying men are turned towards _it_, five times, this day and all
days: one of the notablest centres in the Habitation of Men.

It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah Stone and
Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of Arabs thither,
that Mecca took its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much
decayed now. It has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy
hollow amid bare barren hills, at a distance from the sea; its
provisions, its very bread, have to be imported. But so many pilgrims
needed lodgings: and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first,
become places of trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have
also met: where men see themselves assembled for one object, they find
that they can accomplish other objects which depend on meeting
together. Mecca became the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed the
chief staple and warehouse of whatever Commerce there was between the
Indian and Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one
time a population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and
Western pro