of July the same peoples as pilgrims from Irak, Afghanistan, India, and
beyond those countries even, there being an East and a Far East, and
pilgrims from Arabia, crowded together, noisy, quarrelsome, squalid,
accordant in but one thing--a determination to make the Hajj lest they
might die as Jews or Christians.

The law required the pilgrim to be at Mecca in the month of Ramazan, the
time the Prophet himself had become a pilgrim. From El Katif the direct
journey might be made in sixty days, allowing an average march of twelve
miles. By way of Medina, it could be made to permit the votary to be
present and participate in the observances usual on the day of the
Mysterious Night of Destiny.

The journey moreover was attended with dangers. Winds, drouth, sand
storms beset the way; and there were beasts always hungry, and robbers
always watchful. The sun beat upon the hills, curtained the levels with
mirage, and in the _fiumuras_ kindled invisible fires; so in what
the unacclimated breathed and in what they drank of the waters of the
land there were diseases and death.

The Prophet having fixed the month of Ramazan for the Hajj, pilgrims
accustomed themselves to assemblage at Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo
and Bagdad. If they could not avoid the trials of the road, they could
lessen them. Borrowing the term caravan as descriptive of the march,
they established markets at all convenient places.

This is the accounting for one of the notable features of El Katif from
the incoming of June till the caravan extended itself on the road, and
finally disappeared in the yellow farness of the Desert. One could not
go amiss for purveyors in general. Dealers in horses, donkeys, camels,