The Indian Haj is the most numerous, and represents the largest population of all on our list, and it is besides the most wealthy.  The Indian Mussulman has less to fear from the climate of Arabia than the native of more northern lands, and few who can afford it fail to perform this religious duty at least once in their lives.  The English Government neither checks nor encourages the Haj, and indeed of late years has shown a rather culpable negligence as to the interests of British subjects on pilgrimage.  Such at least is the opinion I heard constantly given at Jeddah, and several recent incidents seem to prove that a little closer attention to this matter would be advisable.  That ugly story which was told in our newspapers more than a year ago of the abandonment of a pilgrim ship in the Red Sea by her British captain is, I am sorry to say, a true one, and I heard it confirmed with every circumstance which could aggravate the charges made.  The captain in a fit of panic left the ship without any substantial excuse, and if it had not been for the good conduct of a young man, his nephew, who, though ordered to leave too, refused out of humanity, there is little doubt that the vessel would have been lost.  A very painful impression was produced on the Jeddans while I was there by the news that this English captain had been sentenced for all punishment by an English court to two years’ suspension of his certificate.  Indian pilgrims have besides been very roughly treated in Hejaz by the authorities during the last year because they were British subjects, and this without obtaining any redress.  Such at least is the gossip of the town.  However this may be, it seems to me astonishing that so important a matter as the Indian Haj should be left, as it now is, entirely in the hands of chance.

The Dutch do not so leave the management of their pilgrimage from Java, which, it will be remarked, stands second only to India on my list in respect of numbers.  Their policy is a very definite one and seems justified by results.  There is no disillusion, they argue, for a Mussulman greater than to have visited Mecca, and they say that a returned hajji is seldom heard to complain in Java of his lot as the subject of a Christian power.  Besides the disappointment which all pilgrims are wont to feel who come with exalted hopes and find their holy lands undistinguishable from the other lands of the world, the pilgrim to Mecca certainly has to encounter a series of dangers and annoyances which he cannot but recognize to be the result of Mussulman misgovernment.  From the moment of his landing on the holy shore he finds himself beset with dangers.  He is fleeced by the Turkish officials, befooled by the religious touts of the towns, and sometimes robbed openly by actual highway robbers.  The religious government of the land has no redress to offer him, and the Turkish guardians of the peace who affect to rule are only potent in demanding fees.  At every step he is waylaid and tricked and ill-treated.  He finds the Hejazi, the keepers of the holy places and privileged ciceroni of the shrines, shrewder as men of business than devout as believers, and he returns to his home a sadder and, the Dutch say, a wiser man.  I do not affirm that the Dutch are right; but this is the principle they act on, and they boast of its success.