The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton

      RICHARD BURTON AS HAJI ABDULLAH, EN ROUTE TO MECCA.

      John Thurburn and his son-in-law, John Larking, received him at their villa on the Mahmudíyah Canal, but he was lodged in an outhouse, the better to deceive the servants. Here he practised the Korán and prayer, and all the ceremonies of the Faith, with a neighbouring Shaykh. He also became a hakím, or doctor, and called himself Shaykh Abdullah, preparing to be a dervish. The dervish is a chartered vagabond; nobody asks why he comes, where he goes; he may go on foot, or on horseback, or alone, or with a large retinue, and he is as much respected without arms, as though he were armed to the teeth. "I only wanted," he said, "a little knowledge of medicine, which I had, moderate skill in magic, a studious reputation, and enough to keep me from starving." He provided himself with a few necessaries for the journey.

      When he had to leave Alexandria he wrote—

      "Not without a feeling of regret, I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the rosy oleander flowers with the almond scent. I kissed with humble ostentation my good host's hand, in the presence of his servants. I bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly, and with religious equality of attention; and mounted in a 'trap' which looked like a cross between a wheelbarrow and a dog-cart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, and biting mule, I set out for the steamer, the Little Asthmatic.

      His Start from Alexandria to Cairo.

      "The journey from Alexandria to Cairo lasted three days and nights. We saw nothing but muddy water, dusty banks, sand, mist, milky sky, glaring sun, breezes like the blasts of a furnace, and the only variation was that the steamer grounded four or five times a day, and I passed my time telling my beads with a huge rosary. I was a deck passenger. The sun burnt us all day, and the night dews were raw and thick. Our diet was bread and garlic, moistened with muddy water from the canal. At Cairo I went to a caravanserai. Here I became a Pathán. I was born in India of Afghan parents, who had settled there, and I was educated at Rangoon, and sent out, as is often the custom, to wander. I knew all the languages that I required to pass me, Persian, Hindostani, and Arabic. It is customary at the shop, on the camel, in the Mosque, to ask, 'What is thy name? Whence comest thou?' and you must be prepared. I had to do the fast of the Ramazan, which is far stricter than the Catholics' Lent, and in Cairo I studied the Moslem faith in every detail. I had great difficulty in getting a passport without betraying myself, but the chief of the Afghan college at the Azhar Mosque contrived it for me. I hired a couple of camels, and put my Meccan boy and baggage on one, and I took the other. I had an eighty-four mile ride in midsummer, on a bad wooden saddle, on a bad dromedary, across the Suez Desert.

      "Above, through a sky terrible in its stainless beauty, and the splendours of a pitiless blinding glare, the simoom caresses you like a lion with flaming breath. Around lie drifted sand-heaps, upon which each puff of wind leaves its trace in solid waves, frayed rocks, the very skeletons of mountains, and hard unbroken plains, over which he who rides is spurred by the idea that the bursting of a waterskin, or the pricking of a camel's hoof, would be a certain death of torture; a haggard land infested with wild beasts and wilder men; a region whose very fountains murmur the warning words, 'Drink and away!'

      "In the desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present Death, and this sense of danger, never absent, invests the scene of travel with a peculiar interest.

      "Let the traveller who suspects exaggeration leave the Suez road, and gallop northwards over the sands for an hour or two; in the drear silence, the solitude, and the fantastic desolation of the place, he will feel what the desert may be. And then the oases, and little lines of fertility—how soft and how beautiful!—even though the Wady-el-Ward ('the Vale of Flowers') be the name of some stern flat in which a handful of wild shrubs blossom, while struggling through a cold season's ephemeral existence.

      "In such circumstances the mind is influenced through the body. Though your mouth glows, and your skin is parched, yet you feel no languor—the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone, and your spirits become exuberant. Your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you, stir up all the energies of your soul, whether for exertion, danger, or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded; the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of Civilization are left behind you in the City. Your senses are quickened; they require no stimulants but air and exercise; in the desert spirituous liquors excite only disgust.

      "There is a keen enjoyment in mere animal existence. The sharp appetite disposes of the most indigestible food; the sand is softer than a bed of down, and the purity of the air suddenly puts to flight a dire cohort of diseases.

      "Here Nature returns to Man, however unworthily he has treated her, and, believe me, when once your tastes have conformed to the tranquillity of such travel, you will suffer real pain in returning to the turmoil of civilization. You will anticipate the bustle and the confusion of artificial life, its luxuries and its false pleasures, with repugnance. Depressed in spirits, you will for a time after your return feel incapable of mental or bodily exertion. The air of Cities will suffocate you, and the careworn and cadaverous countenances of citizens will haunt you like a vision of judgment.

      "I was nearly undone by Mohammed, my Meccan boy, finding my sextant amongst my clothes, and it was only by Umar Effendi having read a letter of mine to Haji Wali that very morning on Theology, that he was able to certify that I was thoroughly orthodox.

      "When I started my intention had been to cross the all but unknown Arabian Peninsula, and to map it out, either from El Medinah to Maskat, or from Mecca to Makallah on the Indian Ocean. I wanted to open a market for horses between Arabia and Central India, to go through the Rubá-el-Khali ('the Empty Abode'), the great wilderness on our maps, to learn the hydrography of the Hejaz, and the ethnographical details of this race of Arabs. I should have been very much at sea without my sextant. I managed to secrete a pocket compass.

      "The journey would have been of fifteen or sixteen hundred miles, and have occupied at least ten months longer than my leave. The quarrelling of the tribes prevented my carrying it out. I had arranged with the Beni Harb, the Bedawin tribe, to join them after the Pilgrimage like a true Bedawin, but it meant all this above-mentioned work; I found it useless to be killed in a petty tribe-quarrel, perhaps, about a mare, and once I joined them it would have been a point of honour to aid in all their quarrels and raids.

      Twelve Days in an Open Sambúk.

      "At Suez we embarked on a Sambúk, an open boat of about fifty tons. She had no means of reefing, no compass, no log, no sounding-line, no chart. Ninety-seven pilgrims (fifteen women and children) came on deck. They were all barefoot, bare-headed, dirty, ferocious, and armed. The distance was doubled by detours; it would have been six hundred miles in a straight line. Even the hardened Arabs and Africans suffered most severely. After twelve days of purgatory, I sprang ashore at Yambú; and travelling a fortnight in this pilgrim-boat gave me the fullest possible knowledge of the inner life of El Islam. However, the heat of the sun, the heavy night dews, and the constant washing of the waves over me, had so affected one of my feet that I could hardly put it to the ground.

      "Yambú is the port of El Medinah, as Jeddah is that of Mecca. The people are a good type, healthy, proud, and manly, and they have considerable trade. Here I arranged for camels, and our Caravan hired an escort of irregular cavalry—very necessary, for, as the tribes were out, we had to fight every day. They did not want to start till the tribes had finished fighting; but I was resolved, and we went. Here I brought a shugduf, or litter, and seven days' provisions for the journey, and here also I became an Arab, to avoid paying the capitation tax, the Jizyát.

      "We eventually arrived at El Hamra, the 'Red Village,' but in a short while the Caravan arrived