The population, except at the Hajj time, including the eleven villages in the plain, is estimated at eighteen, at twenty, at forty thousand. There were only ten resident Christians--European officials or merchants--no ladies. Three of these are Consuls--France, England, and Netherlands. I need not say that we saw everything in Jeddah, and all around it, except Mecca. To have taken these rides, to have walked through the Mecca Gate, to have wandered about the bazars in 1853, when my husband went to Mecca, would have cost us our lives. I cannot tell how I enjoyed the bazars; they are larger and cleaner than Damascus, but I think less rich, and even less picturesque, and my description of the Hajj of Damascus in my "Inner Life of Syria" would do equally well for both. They swarm with a picturesque and variegated mob from all parts of the world; every Eastern Moslem under the sun is represented. There are camels, donkeys, _takhtarawán_ (litters), pilgrims, and Bedawi in quantities, but very few horses. We felt happy in this atmosphere, and the Arabic sounds so musical and so familiar. Here is the open-air mosque where the prayers of the Ramazan are recited. Here the pariah dogs are fiercer than in all other quarters. Here are the pits where the lime is burnt, the fuel and charcoal brought in by the Bedawi, the street of wattled matted booths, where meat and provisions are sold; this, side by side with the great bazar, showing the splendour and misery of the East. Tall-capped, long-bearded Persians are selling fine carpets, cutlery, precious stones--chiefly turquoises and gulf-pearls--and choice water-pipes. Those from Yemen are offering weapons studded with the gold coins of the Venetian Republic, Yemen guns, perfumed coffee, delicate filagree work, and chiselled silver. The pale-faced Turk, in his tarbush and furs in spite of the heat, contemptuously offers arms, jewellery, rugs, and perfumes. Short, thin, dark Indians in white cotton offer silks, dried goods, spices, drugs, tea, rice, and building timber. The Nizam officer talks in a dark corner to the sooty-faced Zanzibari slave-dealer, to settle the terms of some fair purchase. The vulturine Takruri from Western Inner Africa and the Bengali beggar scowl at each other, and the dervishes are singing to the tambourine, and offering a brass pot for contributions.