Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.
skilled in simples, Eastern as well as Western, praise garlic highly, declaring that it “strengthens the body, prepares the constitution for fatigue, brightens the sight, and, by increasing the digestive power, obviates the ill-effects arising from sudden change of air and water.”  The traveller inserts it into his dietary in some pleasant form, as “Provence-butter,” because he observes that, wherever fever and ague abound, the people, ignorant of cause but observant of effect, make it a common article of food.  The old Egyptians highly esteemed this vegetable, which, with onions and leeks, enters into the list of articles so much regretted by the Hebrews (Numbers, xi. 5; Koran, chap. 2).  The modern people of the Nile, like the Spaniards, delight in onions, which, as they contain between 25 and 30 per cent. of gluten, are highly nutritive.  In Arabia, however, the stranger must use this vegetable sparingly.  The city people despise it as the food of a Fellah-a boor.  The Wahhabis have a prejudice against onions, leeks, and garlic, because the Prophet disliked their strong smell, and all strict Moslems refuse to eat them immediately before visiting the mosque, or meeting for public prayer. [FN#5] A policeman; see Chap.  I. [FN#6] The stricter sort of Moslems, such as the Arabs, will not wear gold ornaments, which are forbidden by their law. [FN#7] See “The Gold Mines of Midian,” and “The Land of Midian (Revisited),” by Sir R. F. Burton. [FN#8] The projecting latticed window, made of wood richly carved, for which Cairo was once so famous.  But they are growing out of fashion with young Egypt, disappearing before heating glass and unsightly green blinds. [FN#9] Caste in India arises from the peculiarly sociable nature of the native mind, for which reason “it is found existing among sects whose creeds are as different and as opposite as those of the Hindu and the Christian.” (B.  A. Irving’s Prize Essay on the Theory and Practice of Caste.) Hence, nothing can be more terrible to a man than expulsion from caste; the excommunication of our feudal times was not a more dreadful form of living death. [FN#10] With us every man’s house is his castle.  But caste divides a people into huge families, each member of which has a right to know everything about his “caste-brother,” because a whole body might be polluted and degraded by the act of an individual.  Hence, there is no such thing as domestic privacy, and no system of espionnage devised by rulers could be so complete as that self-imposed by the Hindus. [FN#11] The Calcutta Review (No. 41), noticing “L’Inde sous la Domination Anglaise,” by the Baron Barchou de Penhoën, delivers the following sentiment:  “Whoever states, as the Baron B. de P. states and repeats, again and again, that the natives generally entertain a bad opinion of the Europeans generally, states what is decidedly untrue.”  The reader will observe that I differ as decidedly from the Reviewer’s opinion.  Popular feeling towards the English in India was “at first one
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Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.