gateway of the town. Declining an invitation
to share supper and dormitory from a
party of El-Medinah men, friends of Mohammed
—who were returning to the pilgrimage,
after a begging tour through Egypt and
Turkey—our dervish obtained an empty
room, and spread his carpet. The eighty-
four mile ride had made every bone ache;
every inch of skin exposed to the sun being
baked or blistered. So, lamenting the ill
effects of four years' ease in Europe, and
disquieted about the non-arrival of Nur
with his baggage, he fell into an
uncomfortable sleep.

The following day was spent in recovering
the impediments with which fate had already
crossed the journey. The Indian servant
had disappeared under circumstances that
looked very like an intention to abscond with
pack and baggage; but, being defeated in
his enterprising project, he turned up
humble and penitent. At Suez, our
pilgrim formed his party. First, came Omar
Effendi, a Circassian by descent, the grandson
of a mufti at El-Medinah, and the son
of a Shaykh Rahl, an officer whose duty
it is to lead dromedary caravans. Omar with
the look of fifteen, owned to twenty-eight,
dressed respectably, prayed regularly, and
hated the fair sex. Having been urged by
his parents to marry, to avoid the infliction,
and obtain leisure for study, he had fled from
home, and entered himself as a pauper student
at the Mosque Azhar, at Cairo. The disconsolate
parent sent as confidential servant,
a negro, called Saad, otherwise El-Jinni the
Devil, to bring him home—the second of our
company. The third, Shaykh Hammid-el-
Lamman, was the descendant of a
celebrated El-Medinah saint and clarified butter-
seller, Hammid, a perfect specimen of a town
Arab, squatted all day on a box full of
presents for the daughter of his paternal
uncle, that being the genteel way of expressing
wife in that district. The last, Salih
Shahkar, a Turk on his father's, an Arab
on his mother's side, supercilious as the one,
avaricious as the other, stretched on a
carpet, smoking a Persian kalioon, prayed
more frequently, and dressed more respectably
than the El-Medinah saint's descendant;
he looked sixteen, and had the selfish ideas of
forty.

All these persons lost no time in opening
the question of a loan. They had twelve
days' voyage and four days' journey before
them, boxes to carry, custom-houses to face,
stomachs to fill; yet the whole party could
scarcely muster a couple of dollars of ready
money. Their boxes were full of
valuables, consisting of arms, clothes, pipes,
slippers, and sweet-meats; but nothing
short of starvation would have induced
them to pledge the smallest article.
Foreseeing the advantage of such a good company
of companions, our pilgrim hearkened favourably
to their requests. To the boy
Mohammed picked up in the desert, he lent six
dollars, Hammid about five pounds—at his
house at El-Medinah the lender determined
to lodge; Omar Effendi three dollars; Saad
the Devil, two; and Salih Shahkar fifty
piastres. But, knowing the customs of the
country, and the danger of being generous,
where generosity is a word unknown, the
dervish took care to take, from the first arms,
two rich coats from the second, a handsome
pipe from the third, a yataghan from
the fourth, and from the fifth an imitation
cachemeer shawl. All this was done under
written agreement, in which the Dervish, to
keep up his Indian character, insisted on
the most usurious terms of interest, with
the prudent view of earning a character
for liberality and handsome dealing on
settling day.

The consequence of this transaction was, that
the creditor suddenly found himself a person
of consequence; precedence was forced
on him, his opinion was consulted, and
concurrence asked, before any project was
settled. But this sudden elevation led him
into an imprudence, and aroused the only
suspicion ever expressed about him in the
course of his summer's trip. He says, "My
friends had looked at my clothes, overhauled
my medicine-chest, criticised my pistols,
sneered at my English watch, disguised in a
copper case with a face properly stained and
figured with Arab numerals; I remembered
having seen a compass at Constantinople,
therefore imagined they would think little
about a sextant. This was a mistake; the
boy Mohammed only waited my leaving the
room to declare the would-be Hadji was one
of the infidels from India, and a council sat to
discuss the case. Fortunately for me, Omar
Effendi had looked over a letter which I had
written to Hadji Wali, of Cairo, that morning,
and had at various times received precise
answers to certain questions he had put to
me on high theology. He therefore flatly
contradicted the boy; and Shaykh Hammid,
who looked forward to being my host, guide,
and debtor, in general, swore that the light
of Islam was upon my countenance, and
consequently that the boy Mohammed
was a pauper, a fakir, an owl, a cut-off
one, and Wahabi, for daring to impugn
the faith of a brother believer. The scene
ended with a general abuse of the Arabian
gamin, who was told, in chorus, that he had
no shame, and to fear Allah. But, struck
with the expression of his friends' countenances,
when they saw the sextant, Abdullah
determined, with a sigh, to leave it
behind, and prayed five times a-day for nearly
a week.

The delay at Suez was got through—in spite
of the plagues of Egypt—tolerably pleasantly;
between gossiping, bathing, and joking a
band of female Egyptian pilgrims, sometimes
with, Marry me, O Fattmah, O daughter, O
female pilgrim; at others, O old woman, O