and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended
him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on
his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in
Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and
swore oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu
Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of
sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest.
He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither;
homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than once it seemed all
over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse
taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended
there, and not been heard of at all. But it was not to end so.

In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded
against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his
life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet fled
to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the
place they now call Medina, or "_Medinat al Nabi_, the City of the
Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred miles off,
through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we
may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The whole East dates its
era from this Flight, _hegira_ as they name it: the Year 1 of this Hegira
is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming
an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one; his path desolate,
encompassed with danger: unless he could find hope in his own heart, the
outward face of things was but hopeless for him. It is so with all men in
the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his Religion by
the way of preaching and persuasion alone. But now, driven foully out of
his native country, since unjust men had not only given no ear to his
earnest Heaven's-message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let