“Is that so?” replied Seyyid ’Alí, with a smile that incensed his questioner beyond all measure. “Does not the Holy Tradition say that there must be six hundred thousand souls on this Blessed Plain, and that the deficiency, if any, will be made up with the necessary number of heavenly choristers? I had not thought that the deficiency was so great as to cause so vast a reinvasion of light from above.” “The Tradition,” shouted the Mullá, “says that there must be _fully_ six hundred thousand souls: there may be more, but there cannot be less----” “How many pilgrims are there, do you think?” I asked, interrupting the Mullá. “It is human to err,” he replied, sententiously; “but, however many there may be, and I believe there are 600,000 and more, Allah may increase them. And as for the angels, Seyyid ’Alí, they will confine themselves to the regions of the air, immediately above us, and will say ‘Amen’ to our prayers and supplications.” “Multiply your estimate by 3 and divide it by 6, and you will not be so far out of your reckoning, I think,” and so saying, I appealed to Sheykh Eissa for his opinion. The Sheykh scanned the encampment with critical eyes. “Let us say,” he murmured at last, “that this city of tents on the plain and the hills contains innumerable souls and moving beasts. Am I not right, Mullá Ahmad?” “Well said, my friend!” cried the Mullá. “Nobody save Allah--may I be His sacrifice!--could count the number one by one. And who are we that we should set a limit to God’s omnipotence and clemency?” The Turkish authorities were almost as ignorant in the matter as the rest of the pilgrims. Some of the former said 280,000, others 380,000; a more daring calculation was twice the first number (560,000); and the most timid of all was that of a Turkish official of my acquaintance, who estimated the concourse of pilgrims at 250,000. Now, in 1807, there were 83,000 pilgrims in Mecca, according to Ali Bey; in 1814, Burkhardt, the Swiss traveller, who visited the Holy City in disguise, under the name of Sheykh Ibrahim, calculated that there were 70,000 pilgrims; while Richard Burton (Sheykh Abdullah), in 1850, found the number reduced to 50,000;--a number which, in 1902, was increased fivefold, in my humble opinion; indeed, I maintain with the utmost confidence that this calculation of mine, if somewhat too high, cannot possibly be reduced below 220,000; for the opinion among the Meccans was unanimous that the Bedouin and foreign elements, on the occasion of my pilgrimage, were more than four times as numerous than they had been within the memory of the oldest inhabitants.