perfumed breeze, strange luxury in El Hejaz;
small birds warbled, tiny cascades splashed from the wells. The Prophet
delighted to visit one of the wells at Kuba, the Bir el Aris. He would
sit upon its brink with bare legs hanging over the side; he honoured it,
moreover, with expectoration, which had the effect, say the historians,
of sweetening the water, which before was salt.

On August 28 arrived the great caravan from Damascus, and in the plain
outside the city there sprang up a town of tents of every size, colour,
and shape. A tribal war prevented me from carrying out my intention of
journeying overland to Muscat, so I determined to proceed to Meccah with
the Damascus caravan. Accordingly, on August 31 I bade farewell to my
friends at El Medinah, and hastened after the caravan, which was
proceeding to Meccah along the Darb el Sharki, or eastern road. I had
escaped all danger of detection at El Medinah, and was now to travel to
Meccah along a route wholly unknown to Europeans.

_III.--At the Shrine of the Prophet_

Owing to the caravan's annoying practice of night marching, in
accordance with the advice of Mohammed, I could see nothing of much of
the country through which we travelled. What I did see was mostly a
stony and sandy wilderness, with outcrops of black basalt; occasionally
we passed through a valley containing camel-grass and acacia trees--mere
vegetable mummies--and surrounded with low hills of gravel and clay. At
a large village called El Sufayna we encountered the Baghdad caravan,
and quarrelled hotly with it for precedence on the route. At the halt
before reaching this place a Turkish pilgrim had been mortally wounded
by an Arab with whom he had quarrelled. The injured man was wrapped in
a shroud, placed in a half-dug grave, and left to die. This horrible
fate, I learnt, often befalls poor and solitary pilgrims whom illness or
accident incapacitates from proceeding.

At El Zaribah, an undulating plain amongst high granite hills, we were
ordered to assume the Ihram, or garb that must be worn by pilgrims at
Meccah. It consists simply of two strips of white cotton cloth, with
narrow red stripes and fringes. The women donned white robes and hideous
masks of palm leaves, for during the ceremonies their veils must not
touch their faces. We were warned that we must not quarrel or use bad
language; that we must not kill game or cause animals to fly from us;
that we were not to shave, or cut or oil our ha