The second European who made his way to the holy cities was Joseph Pitts, an Englishman, who was captured by an Algerine pirate, as a sailor-boy of sixteen, and forced by his master to become a Mussulman. After some years, when he had acquired the Arabic and Turkish languages, he accompanied his master for a pilgrimage to Mecca, by way of Cairo, Suez and the Red Sea. Here he received his freedom; but continued with the pilgrims to Medina, and returned to Egypt by land, through Arabia Petræa. After fifteen years of exile, he succeeded in escaping to Italy, and thence made his way back to England. Pitts gives a minute and generally correct account of the ceremonies at Mecca. He was not, of course, learned in Moslem theology, and his narrative, like that of all former visitors to Mecca, has been superseded by the more intelligent description of Burckhardt; yet it coincides with the latter in all essential particulars. His description of the city and surrounding scenery is worth quoting, from the quaint simplicity of its style. “First, as to Mecca. It is a town situated in a barren place, (about one day’s journey from the Red Sea), in a valley, or rather in the midst of many little hills. It is a place of no force, wanting both walls and gates. Its buildings are, as I said before, very ordinary, insomuch that it would be a place of no tolerable entertainment, were it not for the anniversary resort of so many thousand Hagges (Hadjis), or pilgrims, on whose coming the whole dependence of the town (in a manner) is; for many shops are scarcely open all the year besides. “The people here, I observed, are a poor sort of people, very thin, lean and swarthy. The town is surrounded for several miles with many thousands of little hills, which are very near one to the other. I have been on the top of some of them near Mecca, where I could see some miles about, yet was not able to see the farthest of the hills. They are all stony-rock and blackish, and pretty near of a bigness, appearing at a distance like cocks of hay, but all pointing towards Mecca. Some of them are half a mile in circumference, but all near of one height. The people here have an odd and foolish sort of tradition concerning them, viz., That when Abraham went about building the Beat-Allah (Beit-Allah, or ‘House of God’), God by his wonderful providence did so order it, that every mountain in the world should contribute something to the building thereof; and accordingly every one did send its proportion, though there is a mountain near Algier which is called Corradog, _i.e._, Black Mountain, and the reason of its blackness, they say, is because it did not send any part of itself towards building the temple at Mecca. Between these hills is good and plain travelling, though they stand one to another.