butter is inferior in quality, is less solid, has an
oily taste, and soon becomes rancid— which is a
recommendation to many consumers. It is
made by putting it into a goat-skin, tied to one
of the tent-poles, and for one or two hours
moved constantly backwards and forwards, furnishing
pleasant amusement for the womankind.
The Bedouins eat butter to excess. Whoever
can afford it, swallows a large cupful of butter
every morning before breakfast, and snuffs up as
much as he can into his nostrils, while his whole
food swims in butter. The Icelanders prefer,
for fish sauce, high-flavoured butter twenty
years old. They eat "skyr," or curd, with
biscuits, and drink a sort of buttermilk entitled
"blanda."

ORIENTAL SUPERSTITIONS.

THE Orientals attribute to supernatural
agency everything for which their ingenuity cannot
account. They believe that evil spirits plot
by day in hidden places, but come forth at night
to give effect to their mischievous devices. They
are most awake when mortals sleep, and have
many mysterious ways of making their presence
known. They have their institutions and their
hierarchies, their treaties of peace and their warlike
outbreaks. Some are more malignant, some
more powerful, than others. Some may be conciliated
by secret services, and may be safely
trusted when their good will has been secured.
Others are wholly malicious, and any show of
kindness, they exhibit only to betray and sacrifice
those who listen to their suggestions.
Some are supposed to bring messages from
the dead, to be acquainted with secrets hidden
from mortal ken, and to be entrusted
with the revelation of events about to happen.
Many are served by subordinate spirits, upon
whom they confer certain limited attributes,
and charge with special missions to man. Half
the legendary narratives with which the people
are amused by the professional story-tellers are
connected with the spiritual world. All Oriental
languages are imbued with a mythic phraseology.
It forms a part of their proverbial expressions,
characterises their poetry, and is cemented with
the whole social machinery. Among us, notions
of spirits are vague and shadowy. In the East,
everybody is a believer; many profess to have
seen supernatural beings; not one has failed to
hear of their existence and their presence.
Traditions are distinctly interblended with authentic
history, and miraculous interferences are
held to be no exceptions to the laws of Providence
— they are the law.

The country of the blacks (ancient Ethiopia)
has its northern frontier at the first cataract,
and the somewhat scattered town of Deir presents
a singular contrast to the appearance of
the Egyptian towns, in which the Mahomedan
Fellaheen and the Christian Copts predominate,
and it is only now and then that any number of
woolly-headed negroes are seen. The Nubian
race is among the most civilised and the most
teachable of the Africans, and a Nubian captain
will often be found commanding dahabeehs and
other vessels on the Nile, and holding in obedience
and subjection a crew of the long-haired
people, whether the colour of their skin be light
or dark brown. They consider themselves, as
a nation, far superior to the labouring classes
on the banks of the Nile. Clot Bey, who was
at the head of the medical schools in Egypt,
told me that he had once to perform an operation
on a Nubian negro by the amputation of
his leg. The man displayed an extraordinary
self-possession, and did not even utter a groan
while under the surgical knife. " You are indeed
a brave fellow," said the Bey, after the
limb was removed; and the Nubian quietly but
proudly replied, " Did you think I was no better
than a fellah?"

Besides the virtue of exorcisms exhibited by
repeating a sentence from the Koran, the Nubians
believe that they can escape from the power of the
Afrits by crossing a running stream. An Afrit,
they say, cannot follow a human being over a
rill or a river. Hence, if either can be reached,
they find an undoubted protection from the visitations
of the Giant Spirit. Heathens, Jews,
Mahomedans, and Christians, all, whenever able,
have recourse to these means of safety, and endeavour,
as soon as possible, to place a water
barrier between themselves and the Afrit enemy.
But the Nile, above all other waters, is deemed a
secure defence. Not the love of the Jews for
the Jordan, of the Indians for the Ganges, is
stronger than that of the Egyptians for their
own ancient and honoured river. Once in my
travels, when I had given a few paras to a
poor woman for holding my horse, she expressed
her gratitude in these words; "May Allah bless
thee, as he blessed the source of the Nile!"

The manuscript of a French traveller which
I have seen gives a glowing account of the
erudition, the public and private virtues, of
the then prime minister of the famous Ali
Pasha of Yanina, Mahomet Effendi, and of
his son, Wehib Effendi. Mahomet was a master
of the Arabic,Turkish, Persian, Greek, and
Albanian languages; learned in geometry, algebra,
geography, and history. He had, moreover,
though a very zealous Mussulman, studied
the religious questions which separate the Oriental
from the Occidental churches, and was also
a poet and a philosopher, and, best of all, a just
and a popular functionary, of whom it might be
said, a rare eulogium in the Ottoman Empire,
that he has never abused his authority. There
are not many modern Turks who have acquired
a literary reputation among their countrymen.
Mahomet Effendi is among the few of whom both
priests and people speak with pride. Even the
Greeks, who seldom allow that any good can
come out of Islam, make an exception in his
favour, for he is accessible to the giaours,
and distributes his bounties with a liberal
and impartial hand. I, says our narrator,
have been admitted to his cabinet, I have
enjoyed his society, full of wit and wisdom.
His presence inspires respect, all the more