CARAVAN (kar'a.-van) is the name given to a body of merchants or pilgrims as they travel in the East.
(1) Composition. The company composing a caravan is often very numerous, consisting, it may be, of several hundred persons, and as many thousand camels, and it may be supposed that the assembling of so many individuals, together with the orderly distribution of their respective bales of merchandise and traveling equipage, is an affair requiring both time and the most care ful attention. Accordingly, the packing and un packing of the camels as well as the general serv ice of the caravans employ a great many hands, some of whom, by dint of economy and active habits often raise themselves from the condition of servants to the more respectable status of mer chants, who travel on their own account or in the capacity of carriers. Any person can, under certain regulations, form a caravan at any time. But generally there are stated periods, which are well known as the regular starting times for the mercantile journeys, and the merchants belong ing to the company, or those travelers who are desirous of accompanying it for the benefit of a safe conduct, repair to the place of rendezvous where the caravan is to be formed, exhibiting, as their goods and camels successively arrive, a motley group—a busy and tumultuous scene of preparation, which can be more easily conceived than described. As in the hot season the travel ing is performed under night, the previous part of the day on which the caravan leaves is con sumed in the preparatory labors of packing—an indispensable arrangement,- which has been ob served with unbroken uniformity since the days of Ezekiel (xii :3), and then, about eight o'clock, the usual starting time, the whole party put them selves in motion, and continue their journey with out interruption till midnight (Luke xi :5, 6) or later. At other seasons they travel all day, only halting for rest and refreshment during the heat of noon. The distances are measured by a day's journey, and from seven to eight hours seem to have been a usual day's journey for caravans (Hornemann, p. t5o) ; so that, estimating the slow and unwieldy gait of a camel at two and one-half miles an hour, the average rate of travel will be from seventeen to twenty miles per day.
(2) Earliest Caravan. The earliest caravan of merchants we read of is the itinerant company to whom Joseph was sold by his brethren (Gen. xxxvii). Here we find the Ishrnaelites from Gilead conducting a caravan loaded with the spices of India, the balsam and myrrh of Hadra maut, and in the regular course of their traffic proceeding to Egypt for a market. The date of this transaction is more than seventeen centuries before the Christian era, and notwithstanding its antiquity, it has all the genuine features of a caravan crossing the desert at the present hour.
(3) Pilgrims. Besides these communities of traveling merchants in the East there are caravans of pilgrims, i. c. of those who go for religious purposes to Mecca, comprising vastly greater mul titudes of people. Four of these start regularly every year—one from Cairo, consisting of Mo hammedans from Barbary; a second from Damas cus, conveying the Turks; a third from Babylon, for the accommodation of the Persians. and a fourth from Zibith, at the mouth of the Red Sea, which is the rendezvous for those coming from Arabia and India. The organization of the im mense hordes which, on such occasions, assemble to undertake a distant expedition, strangers to each other, and unaccustomed to the strict dis cipline which is indispensable for their comfort and security during the march, though, as might be expected, a work of no small difficulty, is accomplished in the East by a few simple arrange ments which are the results of long experience. One obvious bond of union to the main body, when traveling by night and through extensive deserts, is the music of the Arab servants, who, by alternate songs in their national manner. be guile the tedium of the way, while the incessant jingling of innumerable bells fastened to the necks of the camels—a characteristic feature of Orien tal caravans—enlivens the patient beasts, frightens animals of prey and keeps the party together.