To the best of my reckoning, there are some five hundred and seventy-five pillars in the colonnade that runs round the four sides of the Harem. But the Muhammadans, in general, have a prejudice against counting them, and the Meccans, in particular, declare them to be “innumerable.” The eastern side of the Harem is enclosed by a single row of columns, while the other sides have columns three deep. These columns, roughly speaking, measure about two feet in diameter and twenty feet in height. Some of them bear Arabic inscriptions that are scarcely legible now, and others are strengthened by means of iron bands or by iron shafts running from top to bottom. Every third column is round, standing between two octagonal pillars, some four feet apart; every second column supports a pointed arch; and every fourth column a dome that is whitewashed from without, and painted from within in stripes of blue, red, and yellow. The front of the arches are coloured in the same gaudy fashion, as are also the greater number of the seven beautiful minarets from which the muezzins raise the voice of the Faith calling the pilgrims to prayers. There are three of these minarets along the northern length, one at each corner of the opposite side, a sixth along the eastern breadth, and a seventh at the thither end of the cloister attached to the northern side of the Harem. The columns, with the exception of a few on the northern and eastern sides, said to have been brought from Egypt, reflect no artistic taste whatever on the part of the sculptors that carved them. Those that are made of marble or of porphyry are in one piece--huge blocks rough-hewn by unskilful hands--and the others are made of granite or of sandstone from the neighbouring mountains, and composed of three slabs, shaped, dressed, and then cemented together. At least a dozen raised pavements--called Farsh-ul-Hajar--of varying widths, lead to and from the gates of the Ka’bah, the broadest being from the Zaideh gate to the House of God. The floor of the colonnades is paved all round, but the granite slabs are put together in a very rough and ready fashion. The inner path immediately round the Ka’bah is a few inches below the general surface, itself some fifteen feet below that of the streets without; but beyond the iron pillars, from which are hung the glass lanterns that light up the precincts of the House of God by night, rises a second paved way, somewhat higher than the inner one, about five yards broad, while a third, on a still higher level, is even wider. Bordering on this pavement from without are the Meghámé Ibrahím, the Station of Abraham, the Bábé Shaibeh, the Arch of Peace, and the four Megháms belonging to the four Sunni orthodox sects, behind which runs the gravelled expanse of the Harem. Dozens of sweepers are engaged daily in cleaning the floors and pavements, but their efforts, in face of the crowd all too careless of the laws of cleanliness, are vain.