[Footnote 32: Mr White here introduces a digression on the other relics of the Prophet, the Moslem festivals, &c., his account of which presents little novelty; but he falls into the general error of describing the Mahmil, borne by the holy camel in the pilgrim caravan, as containing the brocade covering of the Kaaba, when it is in fact merely an emblem of the presence of the monarch, like an empty carriage sent in a procession.--(See _Lane's Modern Egyptians_, ii. p. 204, 8vo. ed.) It is indeed sufficiently obvious, that a box six feet high and two in diameter, could not contain a piece of brocade sufficient to surround a building described by Burckhardt as eighteen paces long, fourteen broad, and from thirty-five to forty feet high.] THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOUD. (A REMINISCENCE OF SWITZERLAND) The cloud is to the mountain what motion is to the sea; it gives to it an infinite variety of expression--gives it a life--gives it joy and sufferance, alternate calm, and terror, and anger. Without the cloud, the mountain would still be sublime, but monotonous; it would have but a picture-like existence. How thoroughly they understand and sympathize with each other--these glorious playmates, these immortal brethren! Sometimes the cloud lies supported in the hollow of the hill, as if out of love it feigned weariness, and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the equal eye of heaven. As you approach the mountains, it seems that the clouds begin already to arrange themselves in bolder and more fantastic shapes. They have a fellowship here. They built their mountains upon mountains--their mountains which are as light as air--huge structures built at the giddy suggestion of the passing breeze. Theirs is the wild liberty of endless change, by which they compensate themselves for their thin and fleeting existence, and seem to mock the stationary forms of their stable brethren fast rooted to the earth. And how genially does the sun pour his beam upon these twin grandeurs! For a moment they are assimilated; his ray has permeated, has etherealized the solid mountain, has fixed and defined the floating vapour. What now is the one but a stationary cloud? what is the other but a risen hill?--poised not in the air but in the flood of light.