Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/434

 some relief. We have a following wind today,—that is, the smoke from our funnels is ahead of us,—but we find the weather more agreeable than it was at Beira, or other points on the east coast of Africa We are rarely out of sight of land, and this afternoon we passed the Arabian town of Mokka. We spell it Mocha, and famous coffee comes from its vicinity. Mocha coffee is like the Blue Point oyster; it is very rare, and there are many imitations. The town of Mocha has no harbor, and ships rarely call there, so the little coffee it produces is sent to Aden. Further up the coast is the town of Jiddah. It is from this place that pilgrims start for Mecca, sacred city of the Mohammedans. Only one white man has ever visited Mecca, as white people are not allowed in the place. This man, an English officer named Burton, disguised himself as an Arab physician. He spent several years in familiarizing himself with the Mohammedan religion and the Arab language. After his preparations were complete, he shipped as a deck passenger at Suez and successfully deceived the dozens of real Arabs and Mohammedans with whom he was intimately associated. The pilgrims to Mecca from Jiddah are cruelly robbed by the Arabs through whose country they must pass, and the party Burton traveled with had one pitched battle with the thieves. Burton wrote a book telling of his experiences, and I know of nothing more interesting in the way of adventure. A railroad is now being built to Mecca, if it has not been actually completed, and Jiddah will lose much of its former importance. War and slavery are common in most of the Arab towns along the Red Sea, and it is dangerous for ships to send