for an undertaking at once so protracted and so perilous, he was obliged to content himself with what he calls the experimentum crucis of a visit to El Hejaz, in order "to prove by trial that what might be perilous to other travel

was safe to him." For this purpose he was liberally supplied with the means of travel by the Geographical Society; and, impelled by a general love of adventure, as well as by a special longing to set foot on that mysterious spot, the Moslem's Holy Land, the jealously guarded and exclusive "Haram," he resumed the old character of a Persian wanderer, in which he is already familiar to the British public.

His first intention was "to cross the unknown Arabian peninsula in a direct line, from either El Medinah to Mussul, or diagonally from Meccah to Makallah, on the Indian Ocean." He was obliged, however, to content himself with a less vast but more practical programme. Of the great eastern wilderness, poetically described on our maps as Ruba el Kali, (the empty abode,) he learned only "that its horrid depths swarm with a large and halfstarving population; that it abounds in wadys, valleys, gullies, and ravines, partially fertilized by intermittent torrents, and therefore that it is open only to the adventurous traveller."*

It is very difficult to define the exact limits of the district known as El Hejaz. It cannot be said to possess any natural boundaries, and, in that lawless region, the political boundaries are liable to endless changes. Mr. Burton, however, for convenience sake, has confined the designation to what is properly the Moslem Holy Land; taking Yambu and Jeddah as, respectively, the northern and southern points, and a line drawn through Medinah, Suwayrkirah, and the mountain of Taif as the eastern limit; thus making El Hejaz an irregular parallelogram, two hundred and fifty miles in length, with a maximum breadth of one hundred and fifty. The source of religious

* Mr. Burton calls loudly for a revision of our oriental maps, and especially of their nomenclature, which he describes as often very inaccurate. He mentions a case in which M’adri, (“I dont know,' evidently the answer given to some inquiring traveller,) is gravely put down as the name of a place! This is a parallel in real life for the "Monsieur Nong tong paw," of the comic song.

VOL. XXXIX.-No. LXXVII.

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veneration with which every Moslem regards this spot lies, of course, in the memorials of the Prophet which it contains, and especially in the two sacred cities, Medinah and Meccah. Mr. Burton's visit to the latter forms the subject of a volume as yet unpublished, although promised during the course of this autumn. The volumes now before us are devoted to Medinah, and to the adventures of the pilgrimage thitherward. It is hardly necessary to explain that El Medinah merely means "the city," and is but a brief and familiar form for Medinah El Nabi, the Prophet's City," by which designation it has been known in Moslem history from the very date of the Hegirah itself.

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Mr. Burton's narrative begins with his departure from Southampton, on the evening of April 3, 1853. By the advice of a far-seeing brother officer, he assumed, like Burckhardt, his new character with all its external appliances, from the very threshold of his pilgrimage, and embarked in the Peninsular and Oriental Co.'s steamer, Bengal," under the designation of a Persian prince, in an eastern dress of most unexceptionable fashion, and with an exceedingly oriental looking "travelling equipage.

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Arrived at Alexandria, after passing successfully through the first scrutiny of the crowd of loungers at landing, he was hospitably received by a kind friend, who, the better to blind the inquisitive eyes of servants and visitors, lodged him in an out-house, where he could revel in the utmost freedom of life and manners," and forthwith commenced his training under the direction of a Shaykh, to revive his recollections of religious ablution, to get himself somewhat up again in the Koran, and to renew his acquaintance with the act of prostration. As a wider and more general school of oriental manners, he availed himself of the bazaars, cafes, mosques, baths, and other places of public resort.

*Indeed Burckhardt passed through precisely the same ordeal which Mr. Burton underwent ;-having prepared himself in England to personify an Oriental, and making the whole pilgrimage in that capacity. His thorough knowledge of Arabic and perfect familiarity with Oriental life, enabled him to do so with

success.

"After a month's hard work at Alexandria, I prepared to assume the character of a wandering Dervish, after reforming my title from Mirza' to 'Shaykh' Abdullah. A reverend man, whose name I do not care to quote, some time ago initiated me into his order, the Kadiriyah, under the high-sounding name of BismillahShah: and, after a due period of probation, he graciously elevated me to the proud position of a Murshid in the mystic craft. I was therefore sufficiently well acquainted with the tenets and practices of these Oriental Freemasons. No character in the Moslem world is so proper for disguise as that of the Dervish. It is assumed by all ranks, ages, and creeds; by the nobleman who has been disgraced at court, and by the peasant who is too idle to till the ground; by Dives, who is weary of life, and by Lazarus, who begs bread from door to door. Further, the Dervish is allowed to ignore ceremony and politeness, as one who ceases to appear upon the stage of life; he may pray or not, marry or remain single as he pleases, be respectable in cloth of frieze as in cloth of gold, and no one asks him the chartered vagabond-Why he comes here? or Wherefore he goes there? He may wend his way on foot alone, or ride his Arab steed followed by a dozen servants; he is equally feared without weapons, as swaggering through the streets armed to the teeth. The more haughty and offensive he is to the people, the more they respect him; a decided advantage to the traveller of choleric temperament. In the hour of imminent danger he has only to become a maniac, and he is safe; a madman in the East, like a notably eccentric character in the West, is allowed to say or do whatever the spirit directs. Add to this character a little knowledge of medicine, a "moderate skill in magic and a reputation for caring for nothing but study and books, together with capital sufficient to save you from the chance of starving, and you appear in the East to peculiar advantage. The only danger of the Path' is, that the Dervish's ragged coat not unfrequently covers the cut-throat, and if seized in the society of such a brother,' you may reluctantly become his companion, under the stick or on the stake. For be it known, Dervishes are of two orders, the Sharai, or those who conform to religion, and the Be-Sharai, or Luti, whose practices are hinted at by their own tradition that he we daurna name' once joined them for a week, but at the end of that time left them in dismay, and returned to whence he came."-Vol. i. pp. 20-22.

His next step was to provide a passport in his new capacity, having neglected to take this precaution before leaving England. This, after disbursing a dollar, he obtained from the English consul at Alexandria, (not without difficulty, and, after much unclean dressing and an unlimited expenditure of broken English,) in the capacity of "an

Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by profession a doctor."

It was not until now, however, that the real difficulty of the case began, as the following humorous scene, which we cannot bring ourselves to curtail, will sufficiently explain :

"My new passport would not carry me without the Zabit or Police Magistrate's counter-signature, said the consul. Next day I went to the Zabi, who referred me to the Muhafiz (Governor) of Alexandria, at whose gate I had the honour of squatting at least three hours, till a more compassionate clerk vouchsafed the information that the proper place to apply to was the Diwan Kharijiyeh (the Foreign Office). Thus a second day was utterly lost. On the morning of the third I started, as directed, for the palace, which crowns the Headland of Figs. It is a huge and couthless shell of building in parallelogrammic form containing all kinds of public offices in glorious confusion, looking with their glaring white washed faces upon a central court, where a few leafless wind-rung trees seem struggling for the breath of life in an eternal atmosphere of clay, dust, and sun-blaze.

"The first person I addressed was a Kawwas or police officer, who, coiled comfortably up in a bit of shade fitting his person like a robe, was in full enjoyment of the Asiatic Kaif.' Having presented the consular certificate and briefly stated the nature of my business, I ventured to inquire what was the right course to pursue for a visá.

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They have little respect for Dervishes, it appears, at Alexandria!

"M'adri- Don't know,' growled the man of authority without moving anything but the quantity of tongue necessary for articulation.

"Now there are three ways of treating Asiatic officials,-by bribe, by bullying or by bothering them with a dogged perseverance into attending to you and your concerns. The latter is the peculiar province of the poor; moreover, this time I resolved, for other reasons, to be patient. I repeated my question in almost the same words. Ruh Be off,' was what I obtained for all reply. But this time the question went so far as to open his eyes. Still I stood twirling the paper in my hands, and looking very humble and very persevering, till a loud Ruh ya Kalb! Go O dog!' converted into a responsive curse the little speech I was preparing about the brotherhood of El-Islam and the mutual duties obligatory on true believers. I then turned away slowly and fiercely, for the next thing might have been a cut with the Kurbaj, and, by the hammer of Thor! British flesh and blood could never have stood that.

"After which satisfactory scene,-for satisfactory it was in one

sense, proving the complete fitness of the Dervish's dress,—I tried a dozen other promiscuous sources of information,-policemen, grooms, scribes, donkey boys, and idlers in general. At length, wearied of patience, I offered a soldier some pinches of tobacco, and promised him an oriental sixpence if he would manage the business for me. The man was interested by the tobacco and the pence; he took my hand, and inquiring the while he went along, led me from place to place, till, mounting a grand staircase, I stood in the presence of Abbas Effendi, the governor's Naib, or deputy.

"It was a little, whey-faced, black-bearded Turk, coiled up in the usual conglomerate posture upon a calico-covered divan, at the end of a long bare large-windowed room. Without deigning even to nod the head, which hung over his shoulder with transcendent listlessness and affectation of pride in answer to my salains and benedictions, he eyed me with wicked eyes, and faintly ejaculated Min ent? Then hearing that I was a Dervish and doctor-he must be an Osmanli Voltairian, that little Turk-the official snorted a contemptuous snort. He condescendingly added, however, that the proper source to seek was Taht, which meaning simply below,' conveyed rather imperfect information in a topographical point of view to a stranger.

"At length, however, my soldier guide found out that a room in the custom-house bore the honourable appellation of Foreign Office.' Accordingly I went there, and, after sitting at least a couple of hours at the bolted door in the noon-day sun, was told, with a fury which made me think I had sinned, that the officer in whose charge the department was, had been presented with an olive branch in the morning, and consequently that business was not to be done that day. The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Boshniac, and Roumelian Turks,-sturdy, undersized, broadshouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted, dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes, head-gear composed of immense tarbooshes with proportionate turbans coiled round them, and two or three suits of substantial clothes, even at this season of the year, upon their shoulders.

"Like myself they had waited some hours, but they were not patient under disappointment: they bluntly told the angry official that he and his master were a pair of idlers, and the curses that rumbled and gurgled in their hairy throats as they strode towards the door, sounded like the growling of wild beasts.

"Thus was another day truly orientally lost. On the morrow, however, I obtained permission, in the character of Dr. Abdullah, to visit any part of Egypt I pleased, and to retain possession of my dagger and pistols."-Vol. i. pp. 28-33.