ing a quadrangular "Hosh" or court-yard. On the ground-floor are rooms like caverns for merchandise, and shops of different kinds - tailors, cobblers, bakers, tobacconists, fruiterers, and other

ing, and the smell reminds the veteran traveller of those closets in the old French inns where cat used to be prepared for playing the part of jugged hare. The interior is unfurnished; even the pegs upon which clothes are hung have been pulled down for fire-wood: the walls are bare but for stains, thick cobwebs depend in festoons from the blackened rafters of the ceiling, and the stone flo

a succession of scenes which would delight lovers of the Dutch school - a rich exe

the prudent hotel keepers open their doors, for the following sufficient reasons. When you enter a Wakalah, the first thing you have to do is to pay a small sum, varying from two to five shillings, for the Miftah (the key). This is generally equivalent to a month's rent; so the sooner you leave the house the better for it. I was obliged to call myself a Turki

himself by my side and opened a hot fire of kind inquiries. He was a man about forty-five, of middle size, with a large round head closely shaven, a bull-neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon's, a thin red beard,

r of gratitude, after he had discovered my profession. I was fairly taken in by the p

e eye! Is it for fever? well! a purge and kinakina (quinine). For dysentery? a purge and extract of opium. Wa'llahi! I am as good a physician as the b

ke bread by honestly teaching languages. "We are d

ou will get yourself into trouble; in Egypt you will be cursed; in Arabia you will be beaten because you are a heretic; you will pay the treble of what other travellers do, and if you fall sick you may die by the roadside." After long deliberation about the choice of nations, I became a "Pathan.4" Born in India of Afghan parents, who had settled in the country, educated at Rangoon, and sent out to wander, as men of that race frequently are, from early youth, I was well guarded against the danger of detection by a fellow-countryman. To support the character requires a knowledge of Persian, Hindustani and Arabic, all of which I knew sufficiently well to pass muster; any trifling inaccuracy was charged upon my long residence at Rangoon. This was an important step; the first question at the shop, on the camel, and in the Mosque, is "What is thy name?" the second, "Whence comest thou?" This is not generally impertinent, or intended to be annoying; if, however, you see any evil intention in the questioner, you may rather rough

Cairo on law-business. He soon explained his affairs to me, and as his case brought out certa

tify their revenge by the cudgel or the knife. So Mohammed Shafi'a, after a few narrow escapes, hit upon a prime expedient. Though known to be a native of Bokhara - he actually signed himself so in his letters, and his appearance at once bespoke his origin, - he determined to protect himself by a British passport. Our officials are sometimes careless enough in distributing these documents, and by so doing they expose themselves to a certain loss of reputation at Eastern courts5; still Mohammed Shafi'a found some difficulties in effecting his fraud. To recount all his

ntly he quarrels with his former partner, thinking him a soft man, and claims from him a debt of L165. He supports his pretensions by a document and four witnesses, who are ready to swear that the receipt in question was "signed, sealed, and delivered

respectable merchant, and Mohammed Shafi'a a notorious swindler. But the latter was a British subject, which notably influenced the question. T

uting shawls and piastres with great generosity. He secured the services of an efficient lawyer; and, determining to enli

found this out; and, partly by begging, partly by bullying, persuaded Khudabakhsh to transfer the influential introductions to himself. Then the Hakim6 Abdullah - your humble servant - appears upon the scene: he has travelled in Feringistan, he has seen many men and their cities, he becomes an intimate and an adviser of the Haji, and he finds out evil passages in Mohammed Shafi'a's life. Upon which Khudabakhsh ashamed, or rather afraid of his duplicity, collects his Indian friends. The Hakim Abdullah draws up a

. The pseudo-British subject, having been acknowledged as a real one, must be supported. Consuls, like kings, may err, but must not own to error. No notice was taken of the Indian petition; worse

were mistranslated, his accounts were misunderstood, and the suit was allowed to drag on to a suspicious length. When I left Cairo in July, Haji Wali had been kept away nearly two months from his business and family, though both parties - for the

ritish influence. It is doubtless a point of honour to defend our proteges from injustice, but the higher principle

stitia, ru

English official. And, saving the rare exceptions where rank or wealth command consideration, with what face

f a diamond ring, the gift of a Russian autocrat; or he monopolises a whole column in a newspaper, feeing perhaps a title for the use of a signature

s. It is true that if you save a man's life, he naturally asks you for the means of preserving it. Moreover, in none of the Eastern languages with which I am acquainted is there a single term conveying the meaning of our "gratitude," and none but Germans9 have ideas unexplainable by words. But you must not condemn this absence of a virtue without considering the cause. An Oriental deems that he has the right to your surplus. "Daily bread is divided" (by heaven), he asserts, and eating yours, he considers it his own. Thus it is with othe

return it in kind. But Easterns do not carry out the idea of such obligations as we do. What can be more troublesome than, when you have obliged a man, to run the gauntlet of his and his family's thanksgivings, to find yourself become a master from being a frie

s countersign10 - is, "May Allah give thee health!" Then you sit down, and acknowledge the presence of the company by raising your right hand to your lips and forehead, bowing the while circularly; each individual returns the civility by a similar gesture. Then inquiry about the state of your health ensues. Then you are asked what refreshment you will take: you studiously mention something not likely to be in the house, but at last you rough it with a pipe and a cup of coffee. Then you proceed to the patient, who extends his wrist, and asks you what his complaint is. Then you examine his tongue, you feel his pulse, you look learned, and - he is talking all the time - after hearing a detailed list of all his ailments, you gravely discover them, taking for the same as much praise to yourself as does the practising phrenologist for a similar simple exercise of the reasoning faculties. The disease, to be respectable, must invariably be connected with one of the four temperaments, or the four elements, or the "humours of Hippocrates." Cure is easy, but it will take time, and you, the doctor, require attention; any little rudeness it is in your power to punish by an alteration in the pill, or the powder, and, so unknown is professiona

rcass, and they wh

he doctor to "give them the value of their money." Besides which, rough measures act beneficially upon their imagination. So the Hakim of the King of Persia cured fevers by the bastinado; patients are beneficially baked in a bread-oven at Baghdad; and an Egyptian at Alexandria, whose quartan resisted the strongest appliances of European physic, was effectually healed by the actual cautery, which a certain Arab Shaykh applied to the crown of his head. When you administer

A

h half a part, and of ginger a whole part, which let him pound and mix with the honey, and form boluses, each bolus the weight of a Miskal, and of it let him use every day a Miskal on the saliva.12 Verily its effects are wonderful. And

ough the regime it is concluded that fatal results must ensue. The ancient Egyptians we learn from Herodotus devoted a certain number of days in each month to the use of alteratives, and the period was consecutive, doubtless in order to graduate the strength of the medicine. The Persians, when under salivation, shut themselves up in a warm room, never undress, and so carefully guard against cold that they even

inst the box or the bottle being opened. One of the Pashas whom I attended, - a brave soldier who had been a favourite with Mohammed Ali, and therefore was degraded by his successor, - kept an impression of my ring in wax, to compare with that upon the phials. Men have not forgotten how frequen

Spirit-rapping, sees in the wilds of Tartary and Thibet a something supernatural and diabolical in the bungling Sie-fa of the Bokte.16 Some sensible men, who pass for philosophers among their friends, have been caught by the incantations of the turbanded and bearded Cairo magician. In our West African colonies the phrase "growing black" was applied to colonists, who, after a term of residence, became thoroughly imbued with the superstitions of the land. And there are not wanting old Anglo-Indians, intelligent men, that place firm trust in tales and tenets too puerile even for the Hindus to believe. As a "Hindi" I could use animal magnetism, taking

ast fifteen pounds, the gratitude of her owner was great, and I had to dose half a dozen others in order to cure them of the pernicious and price-lowering habit of snoring. Living in rooms opposite these slave girls, and seeing them at all hours of the day and night, I had frequent opportunities of studying them. They were average specimens of the steatopygous Abyssinian breed, broad-shouldered, thin-flanked, f

art, O Maryam! - w

respond the lady -

one creed - formed to fo

don't yo

yam, the blessin

don't yo

ts moral. How often is it our fate, in the West as in the East, to see in bright eyes and to hear from ro

been bold enough to tell the British public that, in the generality of Oriental countries,19 the serf fares far better than the servant, or indeed than the poorer orders of freemen. "The laws of Mahomet enjoin his followers to treat slaves with the greatest mildness, and the Moslems are in general scrupulous observers of the Apostle's recommendation. Slaves are considered members of the family, and in houses where free servants are also kept, they seldom do any other work than filling the pipes, presenting the coffee, accompanying their master when going out, rubbing his feet when he takes his nap in the afternoon, and driving away the flies from hi

and its neighbour, and finished the work in quite a superior style. Walking out, he armed himself with a Kurbaj, which he used, now lightly, then heavily, upon all laden animals, biped and quadruped, that came in the way. His conduct proving equally satisfactory in the kitchen, after getting security from him, and having his name registered by the Shaykh,22 I closed with him for eighty piastres a month. But Ali the Berberi and I were destined to part. Before a fortnight he stabbed his fellow servant - a Surat lad, who wishing to return home forced his services upon me - and for this trick he received, with his dismissal, 400 blows on the feet by order of the Zabit, or police magistrate. After this failure I tried a number of servants, Egyptians, Sa'idis,23 and clean and unclean eating24 Berberis. Recommended by different Shaykhs, all had some fatal defect; one cheated recklessly, another robbed me, a third drank, a fourth was always in scrapes for infringing the Julian edict, and the last, a long-legged Nubian, after remaining two days in the house, dismissed me for expressing a determination to travel by sea from Suez to Yambu'. I kept one man; he complained that he was worked to death: two - they did nothing but fi

bserve, however, in the following list that I was not a strict economist, and, besides that, I was a stran

astres.

piastres per me

astres per . . .

for self a

0 eggs

fee

n (now 5 piast

ls of bread

nn

of meat

ls of bread

ables

ce

larified butt

dri

f Nile water

cco26

(hot bath)

12

two shillings

the first place, it is the least rigorous of the Four Orthodox, and, secondly, it most resembles the Shi'ah heresy, with which long intercourse with Persians had made me familiar.28 My choice of doctrine, however, confirmed those around me in their conviction that I was a rank heretic, for the 'Ajami, taught by his religion to conceal offensive tenets29 in lands where the open expression would be dangerou

d dismissed him, which disastrous event, with its subsequent train of misfortunes, he dates from the melancholy day when he took to himself a wife. He talks of her abroad as a stern and rigid master dealing with a naughty slave, though, by the look that ac

ee and large lumps of coarse, whity-brown sugar wrapped up in browner paper. On the shelves and ledges are rows of well-thumbed wooden boxes, labelled with the greatest carelessness, pepper for rhubarb, arsenic for Tafl, or wash-clay, and sulphate of iron where sal-ammoniac should be. There is also a square case containing, under lock and key, small change and some choice articles of commerce, damaged perfumes, bad antimony for the eyes, and pernicious rouge. And dangling close above it is a rusty pair of scales, ill poised enough for Egyptian Themis herself to use. To ho

ull down a case from its accustomed shelf. How does he manage to say his prayers, to kneel and to prostrate himself upon that two feet of ragged rug, scarcely sufficient for a British infant to lie upon? He hopelessly owns that he knows nothing of his craft, and the seats before his shop are seldom occupied. His great pleasure appears to be when the Haji and I sit by him a few minutes in the evening, bringing with us pipes, which he assists us to smoke, and ordering coffee, which he insists upon sweetening with a lump of sugar from his little store. There we make him talk and laugh, and occasionally quote a few lines strongly savouring of the jovial: we provoke him to long stories about the love borne him in his student-days by the great and holy Shaykh Abd al-Rahman, and the antipathy with which he was regarded by the equally great and holy Shakh Nasr al-Din, his memorable single imprisonment for contumacy,33 an

se of receiving a lesson from him, he is quite at his ease, reading when he likes, or m

Compassionate, the Merciful, and the Blessings of Allah upon our Lord Mohammed, and his Family and his Companions one and al

m in opinion, especially upon a point of grammar, o

rge thy turband,38" (i.e., set up as a learned man), "and throw away thy drugs, for

e revels in givi

asions when I venture to make a note in my book), "what evil habit is

giving medical

B, without a reward. Wherefore art thou ashamed? Better go and sit upon the mou

l of preaching upon the su

rday! What words are these, O he?41 Dost thou never s

ing a serious subject when it begins t

n verily thou must buy thee a female slave, O youth! This conduct is not right, and men will say of thee -

takes what school-boys call a long "shot" most shamelessly at the signification. When this happens I lose my temper, and raise my voice, a

O man!"