ins
of a nondescript tenement once used for quarantine. No one could be
buried there without the aid of dynamite and a cold chisel. Presumably
missionary report has confused Jeddah with the smaller pilgrim-port of
Yenbo, where there are an island and a sandy spit with a Sheikh's tomb
and a select burial-ground for certain privileged Moslems of the holy
man's family.

The worst indictment of Jeddah (and Mecca too, for that matter) is made
by the pilgrims themselves, though some of it may be exaggerated by men
smarting under the extortions of pilgrim-brokers.

A pious Moslem once averred in my presence that the pilgrim-brokers of
Jeddah were, in themselves, enough to bring a judgment on the place,
and that trenchant opinion is not without foundation. Even to the
unprejudiced eye of a travelled European they present themselves as a
class of blatant bounders battening on the earnest fervour of their
co-religionists and squandering the proceeds on dissipation. I have more
than once been shipmate with a gang of them, and it is at sea that they
cast off such restraint as the critical gaze of other Moslems might
impose. As sumptuous first-class passengers they lounge about the deck
in robes of tussore, rich silks and fancy waistcoats, though out of
deference to their religious prejudice and Christian table-manners they
usually mess by themselves. After dinner they play vociferous poker in
the saloon for cut-throat stakes, evading the captain's veto by using
tastefully designed little fish in translucent colours to represent
heavy cash, and these they invoke from time to time "for luck." As it is
usually sweltering weather, the occidental whiskey-and-soda and the
aromatic _mastic_ of the Levant are much in evidence, and thus three of
Islam's gravest injunctions are set at naught. Their chief fault, to a
broad-minded sportsman, is that they lack self-control, whatever their
luck may be. I have heard an ill-starred gambler bemoaning his losses
with the cries of a stricken animal, and they are still more offensive
as winners.

In Mecca such open breaches of the Islamic code are not tolerated, but
there are other lapses which neither Moslem nor Christian can condone.
It is unfair and out of date to quote Burton's indictment of Meccan
morals, nor have we any right to judge the city by its behaviour soon
after its freedom from the Turkish yoke, when it may have been suffering
from reaction after nervous tension; but, unless the bul