The boy Mohammed, who had long chafed at my pertinacious [p.184] claim to Darwaysh-hood, resolved on this occasion to be grand. To swell the party he had invited Omar Effendi, whom we accidentally met in the streets of Meccah, to join us[;] but failing therein, he brought with him two cousins, fat youths of sixteen and seventeen, and his mothers ground-floor servants. These were four Indians: an old man; his wife, a middle-aged woman of the most ordinary appearance; their son, a sharp boy, who spoke excellent Arabic[FN#18]; and a family friend, a stout fellow about thirty years old. They were Panjabis, and the bachelors history was instructive. He was gaining an honest livelihood in his own country, when suddenly one night Hazrat Ali, dressed in green, and mounted upon his charger Duldul[FN#19]at least, so said the narratorappeared, crying in a terrible voice, How long wilt thou toil for this world, and be idle about the life to come? From that moment, like an English murderer, he knew no peace; Conscience and Hazrat Ali haunted him.[FN#20] Finding
[p.185] life unendurable at home, he sold everything; raised the sum of twenty pounds, and started for the Holy Land. He reached Jeddah with a few rupees in his pocket[;] and came to Meccah, where, everything being exorbitantly dear and charity all but unknown, he might have starved, had he not been received by his old friend. The married pair and their son had been taken as house-servants by the boy Mohammeds mother, who generously allowed them shelter and a pound of rice per diem to each, but not a farthing of pay. They were even expected to provide their own turmeric and onions. Yet these poor people were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to visit Al-Madinah, without which their pilgrimage would not, they believed, be complete. They would beg their way through the terrible Desert and its Badawinan old man, a boy, and a woman! What were their chances of returning to their homes? Such, I believe, is too often the history of those wretches whom a fit of religious enthusiasm, likest to insanity, hurries away to the Holy Land. I strongly recommend the subject to the consideration of our Indian Government as one that calls loudly for their interference. No Eastern ruler parts, as we do, with his subjects; all object to lose productive power. To an Empire of Opinion this emigration is fraught with evils. It sends forth a horde of malcontents that ripen into bigots; it teaches foreign nations to despise our rule; and it unveils the present nakedness of once wealthy India. And we have both prevention and cure in our own hands.