About ten o'clock in the morning
Next day at dawn the great caravan was afoot , every man , woman , and child clad in _ Ihram _ , and whitening the pale green Valley . The day before the pilgrimage . A cloud had hung over the valley where Mecca lies like drift in the bed of a winding gorge . About ten o'clock in the morning the cloud disappeared over the summit of Abu Kubays in the east . The promise of rain was followed by a simoom so stifling that it plunged every breathing thing into a struggle for air . The dogs burrowed in the shade of old walls ; birds flew about with open beaks ; the herbage wilted , and the leaves on the stunted shrubs ruffled , then rolled up , like drying cinnamon . If the denizens of the city found no comfort in their houses of stone and mud , what suffering was there for the multitude not yet fully settled in the blistering plain beyond the bluffs of Arafat ?