tances never prevented him from treating
his foster-child with all the affection of which his kindly but somewhat
weak character was capable. But the cares of a growing family soon became
too much for his means, and when Mahomet was about twenty-five his uncle
suggested that he should embark upon a mercantile journey for some rich
trader in Mecca. We can imagine Mahomet, immersed in his solitudes,
responding reluctantly to a call that could not be evaded. He was not by
nature a trader, and the proposal was repugnant to him, except for his
desire to help his uncle, and more than this, his curiosity to revisit at
a more assimilative age the lands that he remembered dimly from childhood.

Khadijah, a beautiful widow, daughter of an honoured house and the cousin
of Mahomet, rich and much sought after by the Kureisch, desired someone
to accompany her trading venture to Bostra, and hearing of the wisdom and
faithfulness of Mahomet, sent for him, asking if he would travel for her
into Syria and pursue her bargains in that northern city. She was willing
to reward him far more generously than most merchants. Mahomet, anxious
to requite his uncle in some way, and with his young imagination kindled
at the prospect of new scenes and ideas, prepared eagerly for the
journey. With one other man-servant, Meisara, he set out with the
merchandise to Bostra, traversing as a young man the same desert path he
had journeyed along in boyhood.

He was of an age to appreciate all that this experience could teach, in
the regions both of Nature and religion. The lonely desert only increased
his pervading sense of the mystery lying beyond his immediate knowledge,
and its vastness confirmed his vague belief in some kind of a power who
alone controlled so mighty a creation as the abounding spaces around him,
and the "star-bespangled" heaven above. On this journey, too, he first
saw with conscious eyes the desert storms in all the splendour and terror
of their fury, and caught the significance of those sudden squalls that
urge the waters of the upper Syrian lakes into a tumult of destruction.
Frequent allusions to sea and lake storms are to be found in the earlier
part of the Kuran: "When the seas shall be commingled, when the seas
shall boil, then shall man tremble before his creator." "By the swollen
sea, verily a chastisement from thy Lord is imminent." In every natural
manifestation that struck Mahomet's imagination in these early days, God
appea