exhilaration of a swift ascent filled my soul with thanksgiving, and a shriek--like a throb of pain--darted through me from without, striking on the drum of consciousness within me. In other words, I awoke to find myself lying at home, with a handful of my wife’s hair pressed to my lips in rapture. How I came to be there I never discovered, but the mother of my children explained to me with many words that the too forcible removal of the hair I held in my fingers had left a bald patch on the crown of her head. And this, yá-Moulai, is the true story of my redemption.” Meanwhile, we had reached the northern extremity of Mussah-street, where in a shop I noticed a number of small bags of yellow leather containing, as Seyyid ’Alí informed me, the celebrated henna of Wady Fatima. This valley, called after the Prophet’s daughter, the wife of ’Alí, his cousin, is situated about eight hours’ journey to the north-west of Mecca, on the road to Medina. The whole neighbourhood abounds in the shrub from whose pounded leaves the henna paste is produced. The act of dyeing the hair with henna is known by the name of khezab, and is so popular among the Muhammadans of both sexes that it has come to be almost a religious rite. Many a devout dyes his hands and feet and hair once a week, the paste giving to the skin an orange-reddish colour, and deepening the original shade of dark hair to a ruddy black. On the hammám day the henna is taken to the bath; the attendant forms it into a paste in small dishes used for the purpose and called jamé-henna; the decoction should be allowed to stand for half an hour before it is applied to the skin and the hair. There are special women artists who draw, on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands, all manner of pictures with this dye. Not less than eight hours are devoted to the practice, the victims--women, of course--lying with outstretched limbs, for the henna “to take its colour.” If one neglects to make use of the dye one runs the risk of bringing misfortune and leprosy on one’s whole family. The henna of Wady Fatima, which has a perfume peculiar to itself, is considered particularly blessed. I was told by the shopkeeper--a prejudiced person, no doubt--that the Devil himself could be rendered harmless to the Muslim who should dye his hands once a week and employ an apt quotation from the Kurán, always provided he were not clad in ihrám. The assurance that he had sold one hundred thousand bags of the precious dye to the pilgrims within the month gave me a lively notion of the credulity of his customers.