This very reverend personage was closely followed by the chief of the carpet-makers’ guild--a handsome man, sitting sidewise on a camel. Then happened another break in the procession--an eager pause--a gathering murmur. And then, riding a gaunt dromedary at a rapid trot, his fat sides shaking and his head rolling in a drunken way at every step, appeared a bloated, half-naked Silenus, with long fuzzy black locks and triple chin, and no other clothing than a pair of short white drawers and red slippers. A shiver of delight ran through the crowd at sight of this holy man--the famous Sheik of the Camel (Sheik el-Gemel), the “great, good priest”--the idol of the people. We afterward learned that this was his twentieth pilgrimage, and that he was supposed to fast, roll his head and wear nothing but this pair of loose drawers all the way to and from Mecca. But the crowning excitement was yet to come and the rapture with which the crowd had greeted the Sheik el-Gemel was as nothing compared with their ecstasy when the mahmal, preceded by another group of mounted officers and borne by a gigantic camel, was seen coming through the gateway. The women held up their children; the men swarmed up the scaffoldings of the swings and behind the carriages. They screamed, they shouted, they waved handkerchiefs and turbans; they were beside themselves with excitement. Meanwhile the camel, as if conscious of the dignity of his position and the splendor of his trappings, came on slowly and ponderously with his nose in the air, and passed close before our horses’ heads. We could not possibly have had better view of the mahmal; which is nothing but a sort of cage, or pagoda, of gilded tracery very richly decorated. In the days of the Memlooks, the mahmal represented the litter of the sultan, and went empty, like a royal carriage at the public funeral;[6] but we were told that it now carried the tribute-carpet sent annually by the carpet-makers of Cairo to the tomb of the prophet. This closed the procession. As the camel passed, the crowd surged in, and everything like order was at an end. The carriages all made at once for the gate, so meeting the full tide of the outpouring crowd and causing unimaginable confusion. Some stuck in the sand half-way--our own among the number; and all got into an inextricable block in the narrow part just inside the gate. Hereupon the drivers abused each other and the crowd got impatient, and some Europeans got pelted.