A Modern Pilgrim in Mecca;

A MODERN PILGRIM IN MECCA The author's royalties on the sales of this book are contributed to the funds of the West London Hospital, to which, in his lifetime, he was a regular subscriber. MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL, M.C., OF WAVELL'S ARABS. DAMASCUS, 1908. A MODERN PILGRIM IN MECCA Af^vT BY jfB^WAVELL, F.R.G.S. NEW CHEAPER IMPRESSION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAJOR LEONARD DARWIN WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AND A MAP LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY, LTD. 1918 TO MY MOTHER MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL, M.C., OF WAVELL'S ARABS WHEN I was President of the Royal Geographical Society a traveller asked to see me concerning a proposed explora- tion in the wilds of Arabia. There entered my room a young man, rather below the middle height, evidently very light in weight, with dark hair and a much-tanned and he the in complexion ; began discussing matter hand the loan by the Society of some instruments, if I remember rightly with no assurance of manner and with apparent diffidence. As the conversation proceeded, the doubt entered my mind whether I ought not to utter some words of advice concerning the nerve required for an expedition such as that for contemplated ; when luckily me he drove out of my mind all idea of giving any such utterly in- appropriate warning by quietly remarking, as if the words were forced out of him by the necessities of the case, " I have already been at Mecca and Medina in disguise." Ever after that interview I watched the career of Arthur Wavell with the greatest interest, for I felt that I had been in contact with an exceptional personality. This modern pilgrim to Mecca, who was only induced to publish an account of his pilgrimage some time after his return, was not a man easy to get to know by one much older than himself; for he was shy and disinclined to talk, especially in general company. But even in these circumstances his keen wit would occasionally show vi MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL itself, whether he wished it or not; whilst in the society of a few of his intimate friends and comrades, and when in congenial surroundings, his conversation was both bril- liant . and delightfully humorous. And personal danger seems to have been to him the most stimulating of all surroundings. Casual acquaintances must, in fact, often have him in other misjudged many respects ; for, amongst things, his rather frail physical appearance gave no indica- tion whatever of his immense powers of endurance. At the outbreak of hostilities in East Africa, for instance, when affairs were in a very critical condition, he marched sixty miles on foot in twenty-eight hours, a very different affair to a march of the same distance on roads in Europe. It was indeed only those who .were thrown in contact with him in times of stress who ever fully realized during his lifetime his resourceful energy and his marvellous courage when faced by grave dangers. As to his mental qualities, he had a scholarly mastery of Arabic, a thorough colloquial knowledge of French, Italian and Swahili, and a remarkable knowledge of medicine for a layman, whilst he possessed all those many qualities necessary to make an acute and far-seeing man of business. But here again the powers of his versatile mind were seldom fully recognized except by those who met him in distant lands. Arthur John Byng Wavell, who was born on May 27, 1882, came of a fighting stock, his father, Colonel A. H. Wavell, having served in the Crimea almost as a boy and later on in more than one campaign in South Africa, whilst his grandfather, General A. G. Wavell, served in the Peninsula and elsewhere. On the side of his mother, a Miss Byng, he was descended from a brother of the ill- fated and ill-used Admiral of that name. Wavell was MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL vii educated at Winchester and Sandhurst and after ; joining the Welsh Regiment in 1900, he sailed for South Africa in the same year, thus, like his father, seeing active service before he was nineteen years of age. After serving till the end of the war with his regiment and in the Mounted Infantry, Wavell was employed in examining and reporting on many of the less known districts of British South Africa, a clear proof that he had already shown signs of exceptional capacity. He first travelled for six months in Swaziland, Tongaland and North Zululand, his reports constituting the bulk of a valuable War Office Confidential Precis on these regions. Another " confidential document recorded the results of his long and arduous expedition through the little known country to the north of Bechuanaland," which was officially stated " to have been completed with the most satisfactory results." From July 1904 until the end of October 1905 he was travelling with natives only, and never saw a white man; for while he wholly neglected the risks he foresaw for himself, he would not expose others to like dangers. And the dangers were very great. On one occasion, when he was traversing the territory of a hostile tribe, he had the son of the chief publicly chastised; because he believed that the one and only way of saving the lives of himself and his party was by impressing the whole tribe with a belief in the supreme power of the white man even if the white man was only twenty-three years of age. After this the chief became both friendly and very helpful; and indeed Wavell reported that he everywhere " " found the inhabitants quite peaceable a condition of things extraordinarily often experienced in Africa by those who themselves treat the natives well the journey across the inhospitable Kalahari Desert to the Victoria Falls viii MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL being attended with no mishaps. In fact, with his peculiar " temperament, he really had a most pleasant trip," until he reached the Zambezi rapids, where his canoe was swamped, and all his goods lost. By almost a miracle, his most precious possessions, his maps and journals, however, all floated and were picked out of the water, damaged but legible. Unfortunately, he never published any account of his exciting and probably highly amusing personal experiences. Barrack-square routine soon became intolerable to Wavell after he had once tasted this life of adventure and independence, and he consequently left the Service in 1906 in order to seek more congenial work in distant lands. He first went to East Africa, primarily for his favourite sport of big-game shooting. Finding the country rapidly being opened up, he, however, bought land at Nyali near Mombasa, where he became a pioneer of the Sisal industry, now an important branch of the commerce of that region. Here also he learnt Arabic, and here again, finding that his life did not supply sufficient excite- ment, he conceived the idea of visiting the forbidden Mohammedan City of Mecca in disguise, in those days as dangerous an adventure as any that he could have selected. The success which crowned his efforts in 1908 are recorded in this volume, a work that needs no introduction. If any of his readers are not charmed with his natural and telling style, or fail to appreciate his flashes of humour, or are not compelled to follow him in his adventures by the interest of his story, then nothing that I could say in praise of his writings would arouse their attention, and nothing therefore will I say. In the second half of this work, to be republished in this series at a later date, a vivid description is given of the abortive attempt he made MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL ix in: 1910 to penetrate from Sanaa, then under Turkish control, into the region then occupied by the Arabs fighting to regain their liberty from the tyrannical Turk, a deliverance only recently accomplished. Here again his account of his ill-treatment at the hands of his Turkish captors could only be made less thrilling by any such dull preliminary remarks as some editors are so fond of indulging in. In 1913 Wavell hatf his name noted as joining the Special Reserve of his old regiment, and when war broke out in the following year, he found himself far away from home on his East African farm. His first thought was to return at once to England to join in the big fight; but this the local authorities wisely would not permit him to do, for the defence of Mombasa, the port and terminus of the Uganda Railway, was a matter of such urgent import- ance as fully to justify the retention of all trained soldiers within reach. A small volunteer force was first raised in then on his the town ; and Wavell, entirely own initiative, at once set to work to enlist the local Arabs, many of whom were water-carriers. He was by no means blind " " to the most formidable task which lay before the defenders, but the facing of the difficulties to be overcome seems to have stirred rather than deadened his sense of " " humour. The whole business of raising this force was " " to him extremely funny, and in spite of everything he laughed more during this period than he had done for years past, so he told his friends. His men were armed with ancient rifles which had been reposing for long in a " local store but of these a military ; quite number went off more or less regularly, and comparatively few actually burst." This at all events was Waveil's unofficial account of the raising and equipment of Wavell's Arabs, as they x MAJOR ARTHUR JOHN BYNG WAVELL were at first popularly called, the name of Arab Rifles being conferred on them at a later date at his request.

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