Having had my passport _viséd_, I booked a berth and went on board the Khedivieh steamer, which completed the distance between Suez and Jiddah--some six hundred and forty-five nautical miles--in about eighty hours. At ordinary times these steamers are simply employed on the mail service, one of them leaving Suez for Jiddah every week--generally on Thursday--and another leaving Jiddah for Suez on the same day. Though they practically belong to a British syndicate, they go under the name of Khedivieh steamers. The captain and the chief officers are English, whereas the crew are Egyptians and Lascars. During the pilgrimage steamers run frequently between the two ports, and in the year 1902 not less than two hundred thousand pilgrims, I was told, had landed at Jiddah, the majority of whom embarked at Suez. Among these numbers must be reckoned the eighty thousand Russian subjects from the Caucasus and Central Asia, who, for the first time since they came under the Russian rule, had been granted the privilege of undertaking the ancient pilgrimage. Rumour credited them with being the main cause of the cholera that year. If only the half of what I heard about them were true their pollution would still beggar description. The cruise in the Red Sea is not so interesting as that in the Mediterranean. Save an occasional ragged rock rising from the yellow waters, or a flight of white birds over the steamer, nothing was to be seen from hour to hour. [Illustration: PREPARING TO EMBARK AT SUEZ.] When we sighted the port of Jiddah, which I shall describe by-and-by, we were told to put on our ihrám, or sacred habit, before entering the holy territory on our way to Mecca. As a preliminary, I at once removed my Arabian costume, washed my hands, up to the elbow, and my feet, up to the knees; I afterwards shaved the upper lip, leaving the fresh-grown, unsightly beard to its own fate. Then, having performed the prescribed ablution of the head, I closed my eyes and expressed, with the tongue of my heart, the earnest desire to cast off the garb of unrighteousness and pride and to put on the winding-sheet of humility and of passive obedience to God’s will. Last of all, that I might be worthy to visit His house, I prostrated myself on the prayer-rug and said aloud the following formula of devotion: “O Almighty God, Thou art without a mate; I praise Thy sovereign grace with all my heart; Thou art pure and everlasting;” then I repeated three times: “O Lord, Thou art without a mate,” adding, “I praise, O Lord, Thy apostle Muhammad and his disciples and his family; in like manner, I also praise our father Abraham and his house.” The next thing I said was: “Send down upon me, O Lord, the healthful spirit of Thy satisfaction; open unto me, I beseech Thee, the gates of Paradise, and shelter me from the fire of Hell.” And this petition I also repeated three times. I was then ready to don the sacred habit.