Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/272

 on the human brain like haschisch or some other wonder-working drug. The dervish, at any rate, has all the air of the wonder-seer. He is of the true race of the visionaries, and even if he were not, the stupor of trance is at any rate a less unwholesome and distressing subject of contemplation than the spasms of epilepsy. The performance of the twirling dervish leaves no sense of a degraded humanity behind it; but you quit the company of their grunting and gasping brothers with all the feeling of having assisted at a "camp meeting" of the lower apes.

Soberly devout Mohammedans no doubt look askance at both. To the question what such followers of Islam think of these wild fanatics a venerable Moslem replied the other day to a friend of mine, "We think of them, sir, precisely as a sober member of your Church of England thinks of the Salvation Army." The parallel, of course, is not quite exact, but it is sufficiently near for practical