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I used the material thus acquired afterward for my habilitation essay, but the impulse natural to me of imparting my intellectual gains to others had induced me to utilize it in a special way. The material I had collected appeared in my judgment exactly suited for a history of the time that Egypt fell into the power of Persia. Jacob Burckhardt's Constantine the Great was to serve for my model.
The remembrance of my brief abode at Burckhardt's fort has wonderfully brought down the great opinion I had once formed of my own importance, for the vision of that night taught me that though orchards and meadows may not pass away their owners do, and this fact compels to serious reflection upon the nature of our duties and responsibilities.
Recommended so strongly, the work of a less eminent traveller would be entitled to our notice: this presents itself with another claim; for the manuscript Journal was partly corrected and prepared for publication by the learned editor of Burckhardt's former writings. But some important literary occupations prevented Colonel Leake from superintending the progress of this volume through the press.
But Burckhardt's troubles were not yet at an end. The Emir and Aga combined to plunder him, and treated him as the lowest of slaves, until he produced the firman which he had received from Mehemet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha. This changed the face of affairs. Instead of being thrown into prison the traveller was invited to the Aga's, who offered him a present of a young slave.
Burckhardt's first excursion was limited to the borders of the Nile, a narrow space made up of little valleys, which debouched into the river. The traveller estimated the population of the country at 100,000, distributed over a surface of fertile land 450 miles in length, by a quarter of a mile in width.
The surveillance to which he was subjected hastened Burckhardt's departure, and upon the 7th of September he started for Mecca. Well versed in the study of the Koran, and acquainted with all the practices of Islamism, he was prepared to act the part of a pilgrim.
I asked her jokingly if she would not like a husband with a similar head, to which she replied with much energy, and many expressions of disgust, that she would prefer the ugliest slave ever brought from Darfur." Just before Goz Radjeh was reached, Burckhardt's attention was attracted to a building, which he was told was either a church or temple, the same word having the two meanings.
It was the Jupiter of the Arabians, and was made of red agate in the form of a man holding in his hand seven arrows without heads or feathers, such as the Arabs use in divination. At a subsequent period the Kaaba was adorned with three hundred and sixty idols, corresponding probably to the days of the Arabian year. Burckhardt's Arabia, pp. 163, 164. An opinion as ancient as Homer. Iliad, vi. 487.
The mosque was robbed of a great part of its treasures by the Wahabees, but there is some ground for believing that they had been forestalled by the successive guardians of the tomb. Many other interesting details of Medina, and its inhabitants, surroundings, and the haunts of pilgrims, are to be found in Burckhardt's narrative.
As they feel the last moment approach, they cover themselves with their ragged clothes, and very often a day passes before it is ascertained that they are dead." We will conclude our extracts from Burckhardt's account of Mecca with his opinion of the inhabitants.