As for the good temper of the crowd, it was due, I avow, to the soberness of each and every individual in it. Of drunkenness there was nothing on the road so far as my experience went, though I am constrained to admit that a good many pilgrims of my acquaintance had smuggled along with them a bottle or two of brandy apiece which, as a safeguard against prying eyes, had been labelled “cholera mixture.” When I say the mob was sober I only mean that it was not drunk. Its humour, of course, was individualised. It varied with the character of the unit. Some of the pilgrims were lively, frivolous, even rowdy in a playful sort of way, meaning no mischief. These chatted and chaffed and flirted, killing monotony in many a breach of etiquette. They being theoretically resigned to the will of Allah, were resolved in practice to reflect Omnipotence in a merry mood. Others, rapt and devotional, intoned the holy and instructive Kurán, as they sat on their camels or limped barefooted over the stony ground. Prayers were muttered, religious hymns were sung, tears were shed, tales were told, amid the deafening shouts of the drivers and the lofty orders of the _moghavems_. Conspicuous in their pastime on the road were the Bedouins. Either they beguiled the tedium of the march by singing love-songs that acted like magic on the listeners, or else they showed that their weariness under restraint was invincible by frequent salivation. For yawning is almost exclusively a European habit. Oriental folk rarely yawn in public. If they are bored they give odd little sham coughs instead, while the Bedouins get rid of their moral phlegm or call attention to its existence by expectorating. Nor is the habit regarded even by the most courteous among them as offensive: it is hallowed by custom. The virtue of politeness is relative. In Great Britain, for example, the very sound of the word “belch” could only be described as unspeakable; whereas the act itself in many Eastern countries breathes grace and gratitude after meat on the part of the guests. The more often it is repeated by them the better pleased is their host. Thus it is not in a carping frame of mind that I have written down whatever in the manners of my co-religionists excited my quasi-European squeamishness.