When the wives of Arab chiefs accompany their husbands in devout pilgrimages to Mecca, they are carried in a litter borne by two camels. Fifteen miles from Mecca is a small hill, much resorted to by the devout, called Djebel Arafat, or the Mountain of Gratitude. On this spot, according to Mohammedan belief, Adam and Eve met, were reconciled, built a house, and lived together, after a separation of forty, or, as some say, five hundred, years. The women of Mecca are said to be free in their manners, even to boldness. This may be partly owing to the constant sight of strangers, who visit the city as pilgrims, and partly to the dullness and indifference of the men, induced by their abject poverty and ignorance. But the Arabs are in general extremely jealous of the honor of their women. They would immediately stab a wife or daughter, who was supposed to have disgraced herself. A single life is considered so disrespectable, that a woman, in order to avoid it, will marry a man very much her inferior, or even consent to be the second wife of one already married. The poor Arabs live in small thatched huts, and sleep on straw mats. Those who are richer have low houses of stone with terrace roofs; and here and there may be found an extraordinary individual, who has sofas, carpets, mirrors, and fountains. Those whose circumstances do not admit of their having separate apartments for women, are careful, when they invite any one to the house, to enter before him, and cry aloud, _Tarick! Tarick!_ (Retire! Retire!) At this warning all the females immediately hide themselves. If the wife of a Bedouin is seduced, the laws allow him to kill any of the offender’s family whom he may happen to meet. Sometimes the affair is settled by the seducer’s father giving the injured husband three or four of his daughters to sell, for as high a price as he can obtain. The Kereks are not so kind to their wives as the Bedouins, with whom they often intermarry. A woman cannot inherit the merest trifle of her husband’s property. Even during his lifetime he does not supply her with necessary clothing; she is obliged to beg of her father, or steal her husband’s wheat, and sell it clandestinely. No greater insult can be offered to a Kerek than to tell him he sleeps under the same blanket with his wife; for they do not allow the women to share their apartments. When a wife is ill, they send her back to her parents, saying they paid for a healthy woman, and cannot have the expense of an invalid. Butter is used very freely by this tribe, and they consider it the height of meanness to _sell_ it. A butter-seller is a most contemptuous epithet; and the daughters of such a parsimonious person would have no chance to get husbands. * * * * *