The hadj, or pilgrim-caravan, pursues its route principally by night, and by torchlight. Moving about four o'clock in the afternoon, it travels without stopping till an hour or two after the sun is above the horizon. The extent and luxury of those pilgrimages, in ancient times especially, almost exceed belief. Haroun, of _Arabian Nights'_ celebrity, performed the pilgrimage no less than nine times, and with a grandeur becoming the commander of the faithful. The caravan of the mother of the last of the Abassides numbered one hundred and twenty thousand camels. Nine hundred camels were employed merely in bearing the wardrobe of one of the caliphs, and others carried snow with them to cool their sherbet. Nor was Bagdad alone celebrated for such pomp and luxury in fulfilling the directions of the Koran. The Sultan of Egypt, on one occasion, was accompanied by five hundred camels, whose luscious burdens consisted of sweetmeats and confectionery only; while two hundred and eighty were entirely laden with pomegranates and other fruits. The itinerant larder of this potentate contained one thousand geese and three thousand fowls. Even so late as sixty years since, the pilgrim-caravan from Cairo was six hours in passing one who saw the procession. The departure of such an array, with its thousands of camels glittering in every variety of trappings, some with two brass field-pieces each,--others with bells and streamers,--others, again, with kettle-drummers,--others, covered with purple velvet, with men walking by their sides playing on flutes and flageolets,--some glittering with neck ornaments and silver-studded bridles, variegated with colored beads, and with nodding plumes of ostrich feathers on their foreheads--to say nothing of the noble, gigantic, sacred camel, decked with cloth of gold and silk, his bridle studded with jewels and gold, led by two sheiks in green, with the ark or chapel containing the Koran written in letters of gold,--forms a dazzling contrast to the spectacle it not unfrequently presents before its mission is fulfilled. Numbers of these gaily caparisoned creatures drop and die miserably, and when the pilgrimage leaves Mecca the air is too often tainted with the effluvia reeking from the bodies of the camels that have sunk under the exhausting fatigue of the march. After he had passed the Akaba, near the head of the Red Sea, the whitened bones of the dead camels were the land-marks which guided the pilgrim through the sand-wastes, as he was led on by the alternate hope and disappointment of the mirage, or "serab," as the Arabs term it. Burckhardt describes this phenomenon as seen by him when they were surrounded during a whole day's march by phantom lakes. The color was of the purest assure,--so clear, that the shadows of the mountains which bordered the horizon were reflected with extreme precision; and the delusion of its being a sheet of water was thus rendered perfect.