MECCA. 201 



from mom to night ; invite themselves to eat and 

 drink at their expense ; and generally contrive in a 

 month to wheedle from the simplicity or piety of 

 their employers as much as will suffice for the ex- 

 pense of their families during the remainder of the 

 year. The position of Mecca, as it is not situated 

 in the direct route to any country of consequence, 

 and surrounded with perpetual sterility, is unfavour- 

 able to commerce ; and but for its being the centre 

 of the religious enthusiasm of the Moslem w^orld, 

 it must have long ago sunk into poverty and insig- 

 nificance. In ordinary times there is a consider- 

 able trade with the Bedouins and inhabitants of 

 Nejed, who are in want of India goods, drugs, and 

 articles of dress. The less opulent merchants usu- 

 ally employ their capital in the traffic of corn and 

 provisions ; and, though the Pasha of Egypt has 

 made these articles a strict monopoly of his own, 

 the grain-dealers, after paying freight, have usually 

 a profit of fifteen or twenty per cent. The consump- 

 tion of this species of commodity, it may be ob- 

 served, is much greater in Arabia than in any of the 

 surrounding countries ; the great mass of the people 

 living almost entirely on wheat, barley, lentils, or 

 rice ; using few vegetables, but a great deal of butter 

 and spicery. 



The natural disadvantages of the place are coun- 

 terbalanced by a source of opulence possessed by 

 no other city in the world. During the pilgrimage, 

 and for some months preceding it, the magazines 

 of foreign commerce are opened, as it were, by thou- 

 sands of wealthy hajjis, who bring the productions 

 of every Moslem country to Jidda, either by sea or 

 across the desert, exchanging them with one an- 

 other, or receiving from the native merchants the 

 goods of India and Arabia, which the latter have 

 accumulated the whole year in their warehouses. 

 At this period Mecca becomes one of the largest 

 fairs in the East, and certainly the most interesting, 



