, 1876-01-29
A GLANCE AT CAIRO AT THE
TIME THE GRAND Pill
GRIMAGE STARTS FOR
MECCA.
Times Correspondent

seats tor spectators every stone and ledge
was occupied the latticed upper windows
were opened, and crowds of women looked
out the steps of mosques, the doorWays
of khans, the coping-stones OF fountains,
the galleries of minarets, even the roots
of houses, were crammed with people clad
in loose garments of every colour. The
crowd was as good natured as all Eas-
tern crowds are, They had sat there pro-
badly since 7, or even 6, in the morning,
and it was now half-past 10. But they
sat on, laughing and talking, and buying
water or sWeetmeats, or oranges, or bits
of cocoanut, which itinerant vendors
adj ured them to purchase in the name of
the Prophet. They seemed perfectly in
different to the presence Of Christians.
Indeed, that intolerance seems to be dy-
ing out in Cairo. Mrs. Poole, In "The
E~nglishwomau in Egypt" describing
this same procession, relates how she
dressed in Oriental fashion to escape notice,
and how she saw men and boys with sticks
beating all the Franks they met. This
was only so years ago, and now tourists
can safely drive or walk about anywhere,
with all that eccentricity of costume and
manner that people assume when they
leave their own country. Among q
crowd Of closely-vieIed Arab women
seated on the steps Of a mosque,
| saw ayoung European girl, in Leghorn
hat and pink dress, without any veil
whatever, and yet on excellent terms with
all her neighbours and in a carriage at
the entrance of a side street sat an Italian
lady all alone, evidently stopped by the
procession while in the midst of her mar
keting. Here and there were wandering
tourists of the male kind evidently quite at
their ease in the midst of what used to
be called a very f%auatical crowd, But
Europeans were very few and far between.
The crowd was almost exclusively native,
and composed chiefly of the lower classes.
There were many people from the country
in their long blue gowns-both men and
women. One or two Bedouins, in their
great white cloaks, had strayed in from the
desert, but they only looked bored and
bewildered. The Bedouins do not Join
the Pilgrimage. They have a separate
creed of their own. They do not go to
Mecca, because, they say, Gods temple
is everywhere. They do not give aims,
because they are too poor. They do not
observe the fast of Ramadan, because
they fast all the year round aud, faaIly,
they do not pray, because they have no
water whereWithal to make the preIimina-
ry ablutionS which are necessary. All
these excuses are specious, but the last is
wholly bad, as clean sand is specially al
lowed as a substitute for publication
where water cannot be got. Although
Bedouins do not go as pilgrims, they take
an interest in the pilgrimage when it has
started, as each tribe on the line of march
receives a small payment from the chief of
the pilgrims, as blackmaiI, to save the
pilgrims from attack.
l asked an old resident this morning
why the Khedive did not go to Mecca.
"Bah it is too easy, he could go there
and back in three weeks" ''Why should
he not go round by the desert 2" "Oh,
he's much too busy" But though the
pilgrimage has lost Importance with the
upper and educated class, it still seizes
the imagination of the masses, and will
do so for a long time to come. Nor is
its diminished repute any proof in itself
of the lessened vitality of the Mahomedan
religion. Whether there are not other
and better proofs of waning fervour is
a much more difficult question, and one
impossible to answer at the end of q lone