Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage To Al-Madinah & Meccah - Volume 1 of 2 - By Captain Sir Richard F. Burton




























 - 

Our voyage over the summer sea was eventless. In a steamer of two or
three thousand tons you discover

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Our Voyage Over The "Summer Sea" Was Eventless.

In a steamer of two or three thousand tons you discover

[P.7]the once dreaded, now contemptible, "stormy waters" only by the band-a standing nuisance be it remarked-performing

"There we lay All the day, In the Bay of Biscay, O!"

The sight of glorious Trafalgar[FN#7]| excites none of the sentiments with which a tedious sail used to invest it. "Gib" is, probably, better known to you, by Theophile Gautier and Eliot Warburton, than the regions about Cornhill; besides which, you anchor under the Rock exactly long enough to land and to breakfast. Malta, too, wears an old familiar face, which bids you order a dinner and superintend the iceing of claret (beginning of Oriental barbarism), instead of galloping about on donkey-back through fiery air in memory of St. Paul and White-Cross Knights. But though our journey might be called monotonous, there was nothing to complain of. The ship was in every way comfortable; the cook, strange to say, was good, and the voyage lasted long enough, and not too long. On the evening of the thirteenth day after our start, the big-trowsered pilot, so lovely in his deformities to western eyes, made his appearance, and the good screw "Bengal" found herself at anchor off the Headland of Clay.[FN#8]

Having been invited to start from the house of a kind friend, John W. Larking, I disembarked with him, and

[p.8]rejoiced to see that by dint of a beard and a shaven head I had succeeded, like the Lord of Geesh, in "misleading the inquisitive spirit of the populace." The mingled herd of spectators before whom we passed in review on the landing-place, hearing an audible "Alhamdolillah"[FN#9] whispered "Muslim!" The infant population spared me the compliments usually addressed to hatted heads; and when a little boy, presuming that the occasion might possibly open the hand of generosity, looked in my face and exclaimed "Bakhshish,"[FN#10] he obtained in reply a "Mafish;"[FN#11] which convinced the bystanders that the sheep-skin covered a real sheep. We then mounted a carriage, fought our way through the donkeys, and in half an hour found ourselves, chibuk in mouth and coffee-cup in hand, seated on the diwan of my friend Larking's hospitable home.

Wonderful was the contrast between the steamer and that villa on the Mahmudiyah canal! Startling the sudden change from presto to adagio life! In thirteen days we had passed from the clammy grey fog, that atmosphere

[p.9]of industry which kept us at anchor off the Isle of Wight, through the loveliest air of the Inland Sea, whose sparkling blue and purple haze spread charms even on N. Africa's beldame features, and now we are sitting silent and still, listening to the monotonous melody of the East-the soft night-breeze wandering through starlit skies and tufted trees, with a voice of melancholy meaning.

And this is the Arab's Kayf.

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