[p.428]converse, and profane eye must not fall upon the scene.  What grand pictures these imaginative Arabs see!  Conceive the majestic figures of the saints-for the soul with Mohammedans is like the old European spirit, a something immaterial in the shape of the body-with long grey beards, earnest faces, and solemn eyes, reposing beneath the palms, and discussing events now buried in the gloom of a thousand years.  I would fain be hard upon this superstition, but shame prevents.  When in Nottingham, eggs may not be carried out after sunset; when Ireland hears Banshees, or apparitional old women, with streaming hair, and dressed in blue mantles; when Scotland sees a shroud about a person, showing his approaching death; when France has her loup-garous, revenants, and poules du Vendredi Saint (i.e. hens hatched on Good Friday supposed to change colour every year):  as long as the Holy Coat cures devotees at Treves, Madonnas wink at Rimini, San Januario melts at Naples, and Addolorate and Estatiche make converts to hysteria at Rome:  whilst the Virgin manifests herself to children on the Alps and in France, whilst Germany sends forth Psychography, whilst Europe, the civilised, the enlightened, the sceptical, dotes over clairvoyance and table-turning, and whilst even hard-headed America believes in “mediums,” in “snail-telegraphs,” and “spirit-rappings,"[FN#20]-I must hold the men of Al-Madinah to be as wise, and their superstition to be as respectable, as that of others.  But the realities of Hamzah’s Mosque have little to recommend them.  The building is like that of Kuba, only smaller:  and the hypostyle is hung with oil lamps and ostrich eggs, the usual paltry furniture of an Arab

[p.429]mausoleum.  On the walls are a few modern inscriptions and framed poetry, written in a calligraphic hand.  Beneath the Riwak lies Hamzah, under a mass of black basaltic stone,[FN#21] resembling that of Aden, only more porous and scoriaceous, convex at the top, like a heap of earth, without the Kiswah,[FN#22] or cover of a saint’s tomb, and railed round with wooden bars.  At his head, or westward, lies Abdullah bin Jaysh, a name little known to fame, under a plain whitewashed tomb, also convex; and in the courtyard is a similar pile, erected over the remains of Shammas bin Osman, another obscure Companion.[FN#23] We then passed through a door in the Northern part of the Western wall, and saw a diminutive palm plantation and a well.  After which we left the Mosque, and I was under the “fatal necessity” of paying a dollar for the honour of entering it.  But the guardian promised that the chapters Y.S. and Al-Ikhlas should be recited for my benefit, the latter forty times; and if their efficacy be one-twentieth part of what men say it is, the reader cannot quote against me a certain popular proverb concerning an order of men easily parted from their money.

Issuing from the Mosque, we advanced a few paces towards the mountain.  On our left we passed by-at a respectful distance, for the Turkish Hajis cried out that their women were engaged in ablution-a large Sahrij or tank, built of cut stone with steps, and intended to detain