It has not yet emerged
from the shadow of that early world, bare and chaotic, where a blinding
sun pours down upon dusty mountain ridges, and nothing is temperate or
subdued. It fosters a race of men, whose gods are relentless and
inscrutable, revealing themselves seldom, and dwelling in a fierce
splendour beyond earthly knowledge. To the spirit of a seeker for truth
with senses alert to the outer world, this country speaks of boundless
force, and impels into activity under the spur of conviction; by its very
desolation it sets its ineradicable mark upon the creed built up within
it.

Mahomet spent forty years in the city of Mecca, watching its temple
services with his grandfather, taking part in its mercantile life,
learning something of Christian and Jewish doctrine through the varied
multitudes that thronged its public places. In the desert beyond the city
boundaries he wandered, searching for inspiration, waiting dumbly in the
darkness until the angel Gabriel descended with rush of wings through the
brightness of heaven, commanding:

"Cry aloud, in the name of the Lord who created thee. O, thou enwrapped
in thy mantle, arise and warn!"

Mecca lies in a stony valley midway between Yemen, "the Blessed," and
Syria, in the midst of the western coast-chain of Arabia, which slopes
gradually towards the Red Sea. The height of Abu Kobeis overlooks the
eastern quarter of the town, whence hills of granite stretch to the
holy places, Mina and Arafat, enclosed by the ramparts of the Jebel
Kora range. Beyond these mountains to the south lies Taif, with
its glory of gardens and fruit-trees. But the luxuriance of Taif
finds no counterpart on the western side. Mecca is barren and treeless;
its sandy stretches only broken here and there by low hills of quartz
or gneiss, scrub-covered and dusty. The sun beats upon the shelterless
town until it becomes a great cauldron within its amphitheatre of hills.
During the Greater Pilgrimage the cauldron seethes with heat and
humanity, and surges over into Mina and Arafat. In the daytime Mecca is
limitless heat and noise, but under the stars it has all the magic of a
dream-city in a country of wide horizons.

The shadow of its ancient prosperity, when it was the centre of the
caravan trade from Yemen to Syria, still hung about it in the years
immediately before the birth of Mahomet, and the legends concerning the
founding of the city lingered in the native mind. Hagar, in her terrible
jour