That ugly story which was told in our newspapers more than a year ago of the abandonment of a pilgrim ship in the Red Sea by her British captain is, I am sorry to say, a true one, and I heard it confirmed with every circumstance which could aggravate the charges made. The captain in a fit of panic left the ship without any substantial excuse, and if it had not been for the good conduct of a young man, his nephew, who, though ordered to leave too, refused out of humanity, there is little doubt that the vessel would have been lost. A very painful impression was produced on the Jeddans while I was there by the news that this English captain had been sentenced for all punishment by an English court to two years' suspension of his certificate. Indian pilgrims have besides been very roughly treated in Hejaz by the authorities during the last year because they were British subjects, and this without obtaining any redress. Such at least is the gossip of the town. However this may be, it seems to me astonishing that so important a matter as the Indian Haj should be left, as it now is, entirely in the hands of chance.

The Dutch do not so leave the management of their pilgrimage from Java, which, it will be remarked, stands second only to India on my list in respect of numbers. Their policy is a very definite one and seems justified by results. There is no disillusion, they argue, for a Mussulman greater than to have visited Mecca, and they say that a returned hajji is seldom heard to complain in Java of his lot as the subject of a Christian power. Besides the disappointment which all pilgrims are wont to feel who come with exalted hopes and find their holy lands undistinguishable from the other lands of the world, the pilgrim to Mecca certainly has to encounter a series of dangers and annoyances which he cannot but recognize to be the result of Mussulman misgovernment. From the moment of his landing on the holy shore he finds himself beset with dangers. He is fleeced by the Turkish officials, befooled by the religious touts of the towns, and sometimes robbed openly by actual highway robbers. The religious government of the land has no redress to offer him, and the Turkish guardians of the peace who affect to rule are only potent in demanding fees. At every step he is waylaid and tricked and ill-treated. He finds the Hejazi, the keepers of the holy places and privileged ciceroni of the shrines, shrewder as men of business than devout as believers, and he returns to his home a sadder and, the Dutch say, a wiser man. I do not affirm that the Dutch are right; but this is the principle they act on, and they boast of its success.

We in India, as I have said, in our grand careless way, leave all these things to chance. India, nevertheless, still holds the first rank in the Haj, and, all things considered, is now the most important land where the Mohammedan faith is found. In the day of its greatness the Mogul Empire was second to no State in Islam, and though its political power is in abeyance, the religion itself is by no means in decay. India has probably a closer connection at the present moment with Mecca than any other country, and it is looked upon by many there as the Mussulman land of the future. Indeed, it may safely be affirmed that the course of events in India will determine more than anything else the destiny of Mohammedanism in the immediate future of this and the next generation.

The Malays, though holding no very high position in the commonwealth of Islam, are important from their numbers, their commercial prosperity, and, more than all to an European observer, from the fact that so many of them are Dutch subjects. Holland, if any lesson for the future can be learned in history, must in a few years find her fate linked with that of Germany, and so too her colonies. I will not now enlarge upon the prospect thus opened, but it is a suggestive one, and worthy of all possible attention. For the moment the Malays stand rather apart from other pilgrims at the shrines. They boast no great school of theology or particular religious complexion; and as pilgrims they are held in rather low esteem from their penurious ways. But they are a dark element in the future, which it is equally easy to under as to over rate. Originally converted by, and to a certain degree descended from, Arabs, they are, as far as I could learn, followers of the Shafite teaching, and inclined to the broad rather than the narrow ways of Islam. They number, according to the Dutch consular agent at Jeddah, thirty million souls, and are increasing rapidly both in Java and in the other islands of the Malay archipelago.

Another enigma are the Chinese. I saw a few of them in the streets, and made inquiries as to them. But I could gain no certain information. I have heard them estimated as high as twenty millions and as low as five, but it is certain that they are very numerous.[6] They established themselves in China, it is said, about the second century of Islam, and their missionaries were men of Arab race. They are found scattered in groups all over China, but principally inland, and have full enjoyment of their religion, being a united body which is respectable and makes itself respected—so much so that the "Houi-tse," or people of the resurrection, as they are called, are employed in the highest offices of the Chinese State.[7] It is plain, however, that they are hardly at all connected with the modern life of Islam, for it is only within the last few years that any of them have performed the pilgrimage; and if I include them in my lists as Sunites and Shafites it is in default of other classification. They probably hold to the Mussulman world a position analogous in its isolation to that of the Abyssinian Church in Christendom. They too, however, may one day make their existence felt; for China is no dead nation, only asleep. And with them our survey of orthodox Islam ends.

The heretical sects remain to us. Of these the most notable without contestation is the Shiite, or Sect of Ali, which traces its origin to the very day of the Prophet's death, when Abu Bekr was elected Caliph to Ali's exclusion. I will not here renew the arguments urged in this old dispute more than to say that the dispute still exists, though it has long ceased to be the only cause of difference between Shiah and Suni.

Beginning merely as a political schism, the Shiite sect is now distinctly a heresy, and one which has wandered far from the orthodox road. Their principal features of quarrel with the Sunites are—first, a repudiation of the Caliphate and of all hierarchical authority whatsoever; secondly, the admission of a right of free judgment in individual doctors on matters of religion; and thirdly, a general tendency to superstitious beliefs unauthorized by the Koran or by the written testimony of the Prophet's companions. They also—and this is their great doctrinal quarrel with the unitarian Sunites—believe in a series of incarnations of the twelve qualities of God in the persons of the "twelve Imams," and in the advent of the last of them as a Messiah, or "Móhdy," doctrines which are especially advanced by the Sheykhi school of Shiism and minimized by the Mutesharreh or orthodox. These last matters, however, are rather excrescences than necessary parts of Shiism. They owe their prevalence, without doubt, to the Persian mind,