[3] On Sunday, The 29th October, 1854, Our Manifold Impediments Were Pronounced Complete.

Friend S. threw the slipper of blessing at my back, and about 4 P.M. embarking from Maala Bunder, we shook out our "muslin," and sailed down the fiery harbour.

Passing the guard-boat, we delivered our permit; before venturing into the open sea we repeated the Fatihah- prayer in honor of the Shaykh Majid, inventor of the mariners' compass [4], and evening saw us dancing on the bright clear tide, whose "magic waves," however, murmured after another fashion the siren song which charmed the senses of the old Arabian voyagers. [5]

Suddenly every trace of civilisation fell from my companions as if it had been a garment. At Aden, shaven and beturbaned, Arab fashion, now they threw off all dress save the loin cloth, and appeared in their dark morocco. Mohammed filled his mouth with a mixture of coarse Surat tobacco and ashes,--the latter article intended, like the Anglo-Indian soldier's chili in his arrack, to "make it bite." Guled uncovered his head, a member which in Africa is certainly made to go bare, and buttered himself with an unguent redolent of sheep's tail; and Ismail, the rais or captain of our "foyst," [6] the Sahalah, applied himself to puffing his nicotiana out of a goat's shank-bone. Our crew, consisting of seventy-one men and boys, prepared, as evening fell, a mess of Jowari grain [7] and grease, the recipe of which I spare you, and it was despatched in a style that would have done credit to Kafirs as regards gobbling, bolting, smearing lips, licking fingers, and using ankles as napkins.

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