Around this enclosure were pitched the tents of the men who formed her numerous suite.  The beautiful embroidery on the exterior of this linen palace, with the various colours displayed in every part of it, constituted an object which reminded me of some descriptions in the Arabian Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.  Among the rich equipages of the other hadjys, or of the Mekka people, none were so conspicuous as that belonging to the family of Djeylany, the merchant, whose tents, pitched in a semicircle, rivalled in beauty those of the two pashas, and far exceeded those of Sherif Yahya.  In other parts of the East, a merchant would as soon think of buying a rope for his own neck, as of displaying his wealth in the presence of a pasha; but Djeylany has not yet laid aside the customs which the Mekkawys learned under their old government, particularly that of Sherif Ghaleb, who seldom exercised extortion upon single individuals; and they now rely on the promises of Mohammed Aly, that he will respect their property.

During the whole morning, there were repeated discharges of the artillery which both pashas had brought with them.  A few pilgrims had taken up their quarters on Djebel Arafat itself, where some small cavern, or impending block of granite, afforded them shelter from the sun.  It is a belief generally entertained in the East, and strengthened by many boasting hadjys on their return home, that all the pilgrims, on this day, encamp upon Mount Arafat; and that the mountain possesses the miraculous property of expansion, so as to admit an indefinite number of the faithful upon its summit.  The law ordains that the wakfe, or position of the Hadj, should be on Djebel Arafat; but it wisely provides against any impossibility, by declaring that the plain in the immediate neighbourhood of the mountain may be regarded as comprised under the term “mountain,” or Djebel Arafat.

I estimated the number of persons assembled here at about seventy thousand.  The camp was from three to four miles long, and between one and two in breadth.  There is, perhaps, no spot on earth where, in so small a place, such a diversity of languages are heard; I reckoned about forty, and I have no doubt that there were many more.  It appeared to me as if I were here placed in a holy temple of travellers only; and never did I at any time feel a more ardent wish to be able to penetrate once into the inmost recesses of the countries of many of those persons whom I now saw before me, fondly imagining that I might have no more difficulty in reaching their homes, than what they had experienced in their journey to this spot.

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