The Mekkawys are very expensive in their houses: the rooms are embellished with fine carpets, and an abundance of cushions and sofas covered with brocade: amidst the furniture is seen much beautiful china- ware, and several nargiles adorned with silver. A petty shopkeeper would be ashamed to receive his acquaintances in a house less splendidly fitted up. Their tables also are better supplied than in any other country of the East, where even respectable families live economically in this respect. A Mekkawy, even of the lower class, must have daily on his table meat which costs from one and a half to two piastres the pound; his coffee-pot is never removed from the fire; and himself, his women and children are almost constantly using the nargile, and the tobacco which supplies it cannot be a very trifling expense. The women have introduced the fashion, not uncommon in Turkey, of visiting each other at least once a week with all their children; the visit lasts the whole day, and an abundant entertainment is provided on the occasion: the vanity of each mistress of a house makes her endeavour to surpass her acquaintances in show and magnificence; thus a continual expense is entailed on every family. Among the sources of expenditure must be enumerated the purchasing of Abyssinian female slaves who are kept by the men, or money bestowed on the public women whom several of them frequent. Considerable sums are also lavished in sensual gratification still more vicious and degrading, but [p.198] unfortunately as prevalent in the towns of the Hedjaz as in some other parts of Asia, or in Egypt under the Mamelouks. It has been already observed that the temple of Mekka itself, the very sanctuary of the Mohammedan religion, is almost publicly and daily contaminated by practices of the grossest depravity: to these no disgrace is here attached; the young of all classes are encouraged in them by the old, and even parents have been so base as to connive at them for the sake of money. From such pollution, however, the encampments of the Arabian Bedouins are exempt; although their ancestors were not, in this respect, immaculate, if we may credit some scandalous anecdotes recorded by Eastern historians.