towards the South. My disappointment was bitter at first, but
consolation soon suggested itself. Under the most favourable
circumstances, a Badawi-trip from Al-Madinah to Maskat, fifteen or
sixteen hundred miles, would require at least ten months; whereas,
under pain of losing my commission,[FN#5] I was ordered to be at Bombay
before the end of March. Moreover, entering Arabia by Al-Hijaz, as has
before been said, I was obliged to leave behind all my instruments
except a watch and a pocket-compass, so the benefit rendered to
geography by my trip would have been scanty. Still remained

[p.31] to me the comfort of reflecting that possibly at Meccah some
opportunity of crossing the Peninsula might present itself. At any rate
I had the certainty of seeing the strange wild country of the Hijaz,
and of being present at the ceremonies of the Holy City. I must request
the reader to bear with a Visitation once more: we shall conclude it
with a ride to Al-Bakia.[FN#6] This venerable spot is frequented by the
pious every day after the prayer at the Prophet’s Tomb, and especially on
Fridays.

Our party started one morning,—on donkeys, as usual, for my foot was not
yet strong,—along the Darb al-Janazah round the Southern wall of the
town. The locomotion was decidedly slow, principally in consequence of
the tent-ropes which the Hajis had pinned down literally all over the
plain, and falls were by no means unfrequent. At last we arrived at the
end of the Darb, where I committed myself by mistaking the decaying
place of those miserable schismatics the Nakhawilah[FN#7] for Al-Bakia,
the glorious cemetery of the Saints. Hamid corrected my blunder with
tartness, to which I replied as tartly, that in our country—Afghanistan—we
burned the body of every heretic upon whom we could lay our hands. This
truly Islamitic custom was heard with general applause, and as the