Moḥammad might well feel himself alone in the world. Most of his followers were in Abyssinia; only a few tried friends remained at Mekka. All the city was against him; his protector was dead, and his faithful wife. Dejected, almost hopeless, he would try a new field. If Mekka rejected him, might not Et-Ṭáïf give him welcome? He set out on foot on his journey of seventy miles, taking only Zeyd with him; and he told the people of Et-Ṭáïf his simple message. They stoned him out of the city for three miles. Bleeding and fainting, he paused to rest in an orchard, to recover strength before he went back to the insults of his own people. The owners of the place sent him some grapes; and he gathered up his strength once more, and bent his weary feet towards Mekka. On the way, as he slept, his fancy called up a strange dream: men had rejected him, and now he thought he saw the Jinn, the spirits of the air, falling down and worshipping the One God, and bearing witness to the truth of Islám. Heartened by the vision, he pushed on; and when Zeyd asked him if he did not fear to throw himself again into the hands of the Ḳureysh, he answered, ‘God will protect His religion and help His prophet.’ So this lonely man came back to dwell among his enemies. Though a brave Arab gentleman, compassionating his aloneness, gave him the Bedawee pledge of protection, yet he well knew that the power of his foes made such protection almost useless, and at any time he might be assassinated. But the Ḳureysh had not yet come to think of the last resource, and meanwhile a new prospect was opening out for Moḥammad. That same year, as he was visiting the caravans of the pilgrims who had come from all parts of Arabia to worship at the Kaạbeh, he found a group of men of Yethrib who were willing to listen to his words. He expounded to them the faith he was sent to preach, and he told them how his people had rejected him, and asked them whether Yethrib would receive him. The men were impressed with his words and professed Islám, and promised to bring news the next year; then they returned home and talked of this matter to their brethren. Now at Yethrib, besides two pagan tribes that had migrated upwards from the south, there were three clans of Jewish Arabs. Between the pagans and Jews, and then between the two pagan clans, there had been deadly wars; and now there were many parties in the city, and no one was master. The Jews, on the one hand, were expecting their Messiah; the pagans looked for a prophet. If Moḥammad were not the Messiah, the Jews thought that he might at least be their tool to subdue their pagan rivals. ‘Whether he is a prophet or not,’ said the pagans, ‘he is our kinsman by his mother, and will help us to overawe the Jews; and if he is the coming prophet, it is our policy to recognise him before those Jews who are always threatening us with their Messiah.’ The teaching of Moḥammad was so nearly Jewish, that a union of the two creeds might be hoped