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Arab Domestic Processions 255
hump in addition. One palanquin consisted almost entirely
of ivory decorated delightfully with bands of ebony and silver
mosaics. It had five gold Tunis flag-staff heads at its top
and two mother-of-pearl globes in front.
The turban of the pilgrim, carried on a staff, richly inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, was one of the chief features in the
procession. It, and the shields of mirror and the other
trappings of the procession were all wreathed with flowers.
Then, as it was time to amuse the crowd again, there
came another swarm of masqueraders, very suggestive of the
Fifth of November, followed by a band of very native natives
playing Scotch bagpipes, still decorated with the tartans
of the clans which they were supposed to have served. All
the musical instrument shops in Cairo sell Scotch bagpipes.
Then came the friends of the Hadji, splendid-looking
people, in very grand clothes, all riding on white asses, re-
splendent with silver chains and gorgeous beads, forming
a guard of honour for the Hadji himself, a grand bedawin
Sheikh, dressed in a white, silver, red, and green burnus and
head-shawl, and with a silver cord twisted round the latter
like the Crown of Thorns in mediaeval pictures. He was
not at all the typical Hadji returning from Mecca, who is
generally worn to a rag by the hardships of the journey, and
lolling back in a hired victoria ; he was riding on a magnifi-
cent Arab, very sunburned, very hard and fit, as they say in
sporting circles. At any time he would have been a man
of great dignity, and now his face wore a sublime expression
of religious joy, and as he stooped forward to embrace his
friends, the scene was truly pathetic and patriarchal. It
made one of the finest pictures I remember, when the pro-
cession came to an involuntary halt as it turned round from
the Boulevard of Clot Bey into the narrow Sharia Bab-el-
Bahr. Across the narrow street with its overhanging win-
dows, banners of red and white were fluttering in the wind,
and lamps and crystal chandeliers were hanging from lines
across the street as thickly as grape bunches in an arbour,
till the street looked like the S