“Every Hagge Carries His Provisions, Water, Bedding, &C., With Him, And
Usually Three Or Four Diet Together, And Sometimes Discharge A Poor Man’S
Expenses The Whole Journey For His Attendance On Them.
There was an
Irish renegade, who was taken very young, insomuch that he had not only
lost his Christian religion, but his native language also.
This man had
endured thirty years slavery in Spain, and in the French gallies, but
was afterwards redeemed and came home to Algier. He was looked upon as
a very pious man, and a great Zealot, by the Turks, for his not turning
from the Mahommedan faith, notwithstanding the great temptations he had
so to do. Some of my neighbours who intended for Mecca, the same year I
went with my patroon thither, offered
[p.385] this renegado that if he would serve them on this journey they
would defray his charges throughout. He gladly embraced the offer, and
I remember when we arrived at Mecca he passionately told me, that God
had delivered him out of hell upon earth (meaning his former slavery in
France and Spain), and had brought him into a heaven upon earth, viz.
Mecca. I admired much his zeal, but pitied his condition.
“Their water they carry in goats’ skins, which they fasten to one side of
their camels. It sometimes happens that no water is to be met with for
two, three, or more days; but yet it is well known that a camel is a
creature that can live long without drinking (God in his wise
providence so ordering it: for otherwise it would be very difficult, if
not impossible to travel through the parched deserts of Arabia).
“In this journey many times the skulking, thievish, Arabs do much
mischief to some of the Hagges; for in the night time they will steal
upon them (especially such as are on the outside of the Caravan), and
being taken to be some of the servants that belong to the carriers, or
owners of the camels, they are not suspected. When they see an Hagge
fast asleep (for it is usual for them to sleep on the road), they loose
a camel before and behind, and one of the thieves leads it away with
the Hagge upon its back asleep. Another of them in the meanwhile, pulls
on the next camel to tie it to the camel from whence the halter of the
other was cut; for if that camel be not fastened again to the leading
camel, it will stop, and all that are behind will then stop of course,
which might be the means of discovering the robbers. When they have
gotten the stolen camel, with his rider, at a convenient distance from
the Caravan, and think themselves out of danger, they awake the Hagge,
and sometimes destroy him immediately; but at other times, being a
little more
[p.386] inclined to mercy, they strip him naked, and let him return to
the Caravan.[FN#47]
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