Pitts’ “Cottor” Must Be A Kitar, But He Uses The Word In Another Of Its Numerous Senses. [FN#44] This Vehicle Is The “Takht-Rawan” Of Arabia. [FN#45] He Describes The Mashals Still In Use.

Lane has sketched them, Mod.

Egypt. chap. vi. [FN#46] Pitts means by “imaginary Abdes,” the sand ablution,—lawful when water is wanted for sustaining life. [FN#47] As I shall explain at a future time, there are still some Hijazi Badawin whose young men, before entering life, risk everything in order to plunder a Haji. They care little for the value of the article stolen, the exploit consists in stealing it. [FN#48] The walls, therefore, were built between A.D. 1503 and A.D. 1680. [FN#49] These are not windows, but simply the inter-columnar spaces filled with grating. [FN#50] This account is perfectly correct. The Eunuchs, however, do not go into the tomb; they only light the lamps in, and sweep the passage round, the Sepulchre. [FN#51] These are the small apertures in the Southern grating. See Chap. xvi. [FN#52] The Caravan must have been near the harbour of Muwaylah, where supplies are abundant.

[p.390]APPENDIX VI.

GIOVANNI FINATI.

THE third pilgrim on our list is Giovanni Finati, who, under the Moslem name of “Haji Mohammed,” made the campaign against the Wahhabis for the recovery of Meccah and Al-Madinah. A native of Ferrara, the eldest of the four scions of a small landed proprietor, “tenderly attached to his mother,” and brought up most unwillingly for a holy vocation,—to use his own words, “instructed in all that course of frivolous and empty ceremonials and mysteries, which form a principal feature in the training of a priest for the Romish Church,” in A.D. 1805, Giovanni Finati’s name appeared in the list of Italian conscripts. After a few vain struggles with fate, he was marched to Milan, drilled and trained; the next year his division was ordered to the Tyrol, where the young man, “brought up for the church,” instantly deserted. Discovered in his native town, he was sent under circumstances of suitable indignity to join his regiment at Venice, where a general act of grace, promulgated on occasion of Napoleon’s short visit, preserved him from a platoon of infantry. His next move was to Spalato, in Dalmatia, where he marched under General Marmont to Cattaro, the last retreat of the hardy and warlike Montenegrins. At Budoa, a sea-port S.E. of Ragusa, having consulted an Albanian “captain-merchant,” Giovanni Finati, and fifteen other Italians—

[p.391] “including the sergeant’s wife,” swore fidelity to one another, and deserted with all their arms and accoutrements. They passed into the Albanese territory, and were hospitably treated as “soldiers, who had deserted from the infidel army in Dalmatia,” by the Pasha, posted at Antivari to keep check upon the French operations. At first they were lodged in the Mosque, and the sergeant’s wife had been set apart from the rest; but as they refused to apostatize they were made common slaves, and worked at the quarries till their “backs were sore.” Under these circumstances, the sergeant discovering and promulgating his discovery that “the Mahometans believe as we do in a god; and upon examination that we might find the differences from our mother church to be less than we had imagined,”—all at once came the determination of professing to be Mohammedans.

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