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At present the privilege of the sacred territory seems almost forgotten; and it has been crossed in every direction by infidel Christians employed in the army of Mohammed Aly or Tousoun Pasha, who, though they have not entered Mekka, have visited Mount Arafat.

The last time the Wahabys performed the Hadj was in 1811, shortly after the first defeat of Tousoun Pasha at Djedeyde: they were accompanied by large bodies of Bedouins of Kahtan, Asyr, with others from the most interior part of the Desert. The plunder taken from the Turkish army was sold to the Mekkawys in the market at Arafat.

Tousoun Pasha had very imprudently seized a great number of the Bedouins' camels, and obliged them to accompany his army, which had so terrified them, that, previous to Mohammed Aly's arrival, famine was apprehended from the want of beasts of transport. The Pasha endeavoured to restore confidence, and some of the Bedouins began to return with their beasts.

A second, in 1812, was more successful: while Tousoun, in September of that year, took Medina, Mustafa Bey, the Pasha's brother-in-law, proceeded directly with the cavalry under his command to Djidda, Mekka, and Tayf; all which surrendered, almost without bloodshed.

Several persons of the Pasha's court were at this time ill of fevers; Tousoun Pasha himself was in an indifferent state of health, and his physician had few medicines fit for such cases. He begged of me the bark, which I gave him, as I was then in good health, and thought myself already in the vicinity of Egypt, where I hoped to arrive in about two months.

The journey here detailed was performed by Tousoun Pasha's army at night. Three days from Medina to Hanakye, and eight days from thence to Dat. A person belonging to the court of Tousoun Pasha measured the distance by his watch. The caravans, loaded with corn, are generally ten or eleven days on the road between Medina and Rass.

Medina now continues under the government of a Turkish commander; a post filled for a few months by the Scotchman, Thomas Keith, or Ibrahim Aga, whom I have mentioned as being the treasurer of Tousoun Pasha.

The Bedouins of the eastern Desert, at three or four days' journey from the town, are rich in camels; a strolling party of the horsemen of Tousoun Pasha sent in, during my stay, seven hundred of them, which they had taken from a single encampment of the Beni Hetym tribe.

Tousoun Pasha was often left for months at Medina, ignorant of the state of the army under his father; and even the latter usually received his intelligence from Mekka and Djidda by ordinary conveyances of caravans; expresses were seldom despatched, and still less any regular communication established over land between Cairo and Mekka.

In this neighbourhood lived Tousoun Pasha, in a private dwelling; and near it, in the best house of the town, belonging to the rich merchant Abd el Shekour, lived the Pasha's mother, the wife of Mohammed Aly, and his own women, who had lately come on a visit.