precluded from exercising their religious rites in their own way, and when they were even shut out from the regular encampment on the plain of Arafat. But to-day they are not only allowed to gain salvation as the spirit moves them through the performance of their special ceremonies; they are also accorded the privilege of following the time laid down in their own almanacks for the due solemnisation of their sacred rites, and that altogether apart from the Orthodox sects who follow invariably the instructions of the Kazi of Mecca. This is an immense gain; let us consider what it means: Does it not mean that the Prophet’s aim in making Pilgrimage an inseparable part of the Faith, is getting, year by year, a step nearer to completion? And if so, can the enthusiast’s belief in the possibility of an united Islám--an Islám rooted in “one life, one law, one element, the one far-off divine event,” be dismissed as a dream too spiritual to be substantiated? I say no; for a dream that is already a spiritual truth, as it most certainly is among the enlightened at the present time, may one day become a political fact in the eyes of the whole world. However, come with me to the Persian encampment, and I will tell you on the way something more about the city of tents, as well as something more of the Mussulmans of the Shiah persuasion. [Illustration: A LEARNED MUSSULMAN OF INDIA.] The first thing that struck me, by the light of day, was the contrast presented by the personal cleanliness of such of the pilgrims as had performed their ablutions, and the inconceivable filthiness of the surroundings in which they lived. To attempt to describe the causes that resulted in this insanitary condition of the encampment (a condition that, in the absence of any medical help worth mentioning, added considerably to the violence of the cholera and the number of its victims) would be to enumerate the disgusting habits of every individual camp-follower in the train of the grandees, not to allude to those of the poor and destitute, who either lived under tattered rags over rude crossbars, like the dervishes, or slept with the vermin on the naked ground. The scene was pleasing to the eye, no doubt; but the contagion spread by its most picturesque features was none the less overpowering to the nose. At a distance it was artistic: a glimpse of gipsy life twinkling with colour; walk into it, and it was only fetid stench and festering pollution. The tents of the less poverty-stricken caravans were pitched in rings called _dowars_; the beasts of burden being hobbled in the centre, or tethered to the tent-pegs outside; and the shape and colour of the tents, if less various than the facial types of those who dwelt in them, were sufficiently diversified, in certain quarters, to relieve the monotony of the general picture. Red within and white without, the tents of the middle classes were dome-shaped, while those of the privileged dignitaries were as