in another man's
garden, even for economic purposes, without consulting him. Fowls and
missionaries are useful and even desirable in a suitable environment,
otherwise they can be a nuisance.

Next in order as we travel is the Hejaz, where Islam started on its
mission to harry exotic creeds and nations, until its conquering
progress was checked decisively by reinvigorated Christendom. In
missionary parlance, Arabia generally is referred to as "a Gibraltar of
fanaticism and pride which shuts out the messenger of Christ," and it
must be admitted that the Hejaz has hitherto justified this description
to a certain extent. Even at Jeddah Christians were only just tolerated
before the War, and I found it advisable, when exploring its tortuous
bazars, to wear a tarboosh, which earned me the respectful salutations
then accorded to a Turk. The indigenous townsfolk of Jeddah are the
"meanest" set of Moslems I have ever met--I use the epithet in its
American sense, as indicating a blend of currishness and crabbedness.
They cringed to the Turk when the braver Arabs of the south were
hammering the oppressor in Asir and Yamen, but, like pariahs, were ready
to fall on them and their women and children when they had surrendered
after a gallant struggle, overwhelmed by an intensive bombardment from
the sea. The alien Moslems resident in Jeddah--especially the
Indians--are not a bad lot, but there is an atmosphere of intolerance
brooding over the whole place which even affects Jeddah harbour. I
remember being shipmate in 1913 with some eight hundred pilgrims from
Aden and the southern ports of the Red Sea. As we were discharging them
off Jeddah, a plump and respectable Aden merchant whom I knew by sight,
but who did not know me in the guise I then wore, was gazing in rapt
enthusiasm at sun-scorched Jeddah, which, against the sterile country
beyond, looked like a stale bride-cake on a dust heap. "A sacred land,"
he crooned. "A blessed land where pigs and Christians cannot live."
Incidentally he made a very good living out of Christians and was
actually carrying his gear in a pigskin valise.

At the same time, it is absurd for missionaries to aver of Christians at
Jeddah that "even those who die in the city are buried on an island at
sea." The Christian cemetery lies to the south of the town (we had to
dislodge the Turks from it with shrapnel during the fighting), and the
only island is a small coral reef just big enough to support the ru