[p.435]mourning death, whilst the others listened to him with breathless attention.  Sometimes their emotion was too strong to be repressed.  “Ay Fatimah!  Ay Muzlumah!  Way! way!-O Fatimah!  O thou injured one!  Alas! alas!” burst involuntarily from their lips, despite the danger of such exclamations; tears trickled down their hairy cheeks, and their brawny bosoms heaved with sobs.  A strange sight it was to see rugged fellows, mountaineers perhaps, or the fierce Iliyat of the plains, sometimes weeping silently like children, sometimes shrieking like hysteric girls, and utterly careless to conceal a grief so coarse and grisly, at the same time so true and real, that I knew not how to behold it.  Then the Satanic scowls with which they passed by, or pretended to pray at, the hated Omar’s tomb!  With what curses their hearts are belying those mouths full of blessings!  How they are internally canonising Fayruz-the Persian slave who stabbed Omar in the Mosque-and praying for his eternal happiness in the presence of the murdered man!  Sticks and stones, however, and not unfrequently the knife and the sabre, have taught them the hard lesson of disciplining their feelings; and nothing but a furious contraction of the brow, a roll of the eye, intensely vicious, and a twitching of the muscles about the region of the mouth, denote the wild storm of wrath within.  They generally, too, manage to discharge some part of their passion in words.  “Hail Omar, thou hog!” exclaims some fanatic Madani as he passes by the heretic-a demand more outraging than requiring a red-hot, black-north Protestant to bless the Pope.  “O Allah! hell him!” meekly responds the Persian, changing the benediction to a curse most intelligible to, and most delicious in, his fellows’ ears.[FN#30]

[p.436]An evening hour in the steamy heat of the Harim was equal to half a dozen afternoons; and I left it resolved never to revisit it till the Hajj departed from Al-Madinah.  It was only prudent not to see much of the ’Ajamis; and as I did so somewhat ostentatiously, my companions discovered that the Shaykh Abdullah, having slain many of those heretics in some war or other, was avoiding them to escape retaliation.  In proof of my generalistic qualities, the rolling down of the water jar upon the heads of the Maghribi Pilgrims in the “Golden Thread” was quoted, and all offered to fight for me a l’outrance.  I took care not to contradict the report.

[FN#1] This city derives its names, the “Great Gate of Pilgrimage,” and the “Key of the Prophet’s Tomb” from its being the gathering-place of this caravan. [FN#2] The Egyptians corruptly pronounce “Al-Misr,” i.e.  Cairo, as “Al-Masr.” [FN#3] note to fourth edition.-I reprint the following from the Illustrated News in proof that the literati of England have still something to learn:-"On the 1st instant the annual ceremony of the departure of the Sure-emini with the Imperial gifts for the Prophet’s tomb at Mecca took place