A SCENE ON THE SAKKARA DESERT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 215, 16 October 1909, Page 3

A SCENE ON THE SAKKARA DESERT.

The Egyptians think that we English look upon their religion with contempt. | Let me admit at once that there is some excuse for derision. It is difficult to respect a faith which, however pure in its origin, has gathered about it such corrupt incrustations that there often seems to be no correspondence bctwcßtt belief and conduct. But, all the same, it is a dangerous thing to show a subject race that yon look with scorn on that which is dearer to it than life, it needs sympathy, too, and I think imagination, to »ee in primitive and perhaps halfhiirharic manifestations of emotion among a backward people the germs w the religious feeling that is to be fouud j in the highest intellects. Last spring 1 rode with an Egyplhn through the villages of the Sakkara Desert to sec the Zikrs that were being held in honor of the Prophet's birthday. It was night, there was a full moon, and as we trotted over the sand which was ribbed by the cool breeze that had j' sprung up at nightfall, the desert was I full ot ghosts—the ghosts of the pyraj mids, of the old, scarrcd-face Sphinx, of the date trees that marked the u'cign- ' borliood of the mud-built houses, but, i above all, of the fires lighted near to th.j i Saints' house, about which groups of , people were swaying to and fro to a j wild chorus of "Allah! Allah!" and a monotonous yet soul-stirring beat of native drums.

As we came up to these groups one by one we .saw strange, half-savage sights. Sometimes in their religious intoxication the worshippers would cry out as if suddenly endowed with a gift of unknown tongues; sometimes the wildest of them would fall down in a fit of frenzy; sometimes a woman carrying a dying child in her arms would leap up° from the dark circle of women who squatted at a distance, run to the Zikr, race three times round it, dash through it. and then hurry home in the certainiy that her little one's life would 'he saved. it was terrible, almost frightening; dial as 1 rode back, utterly shaken with emotion, asking myself if this could be Mohammedanism, X remembered certain scenes that occurred at tile 'oirth of Christianity, and thought the soul of a people was a great and mysterious thine., not to be laughed at or treated lightly wnatever the manner of tin manifestation.—Hall Caine, in the London Daily Telegraph.