* * * * * After A Peep Through The Open Window, I Fell Asleep, Feeling Once More At Home.

FOOTNOTES [1] "A tradition exists," says Lieut.

Cruttenden, "amongst the people of Harar, that the prosperity of their city depends upon the exclusion of all travellers not of the Moslem faith, and all Christians are specially interdicted." These freaks of interdiction are common to African rulers, who on occasions of war, famine or pestilence, struck with some superstitious fear, close their gates to strangers.

[2] The 6th of Safar in 1864 corresponds with our 28th October. The Hadis is [Arabic] "when the 6th of Safar went forth, my faith from the cloud came forth."

[3] The Abyssinian law of detaining guests,--Pedro Covilhao the first Portuguese envoy (A.D. 1499) lived and died a prisoner there,--appears to have been the Christian modification of the old Ethiopic rite of sacrificing strangers.

[4] It would be wonderful if Orientals omitted to romance about the origin of such an invention as the Dayrah or compass. Shaykh Majid is said to have been a Syrian saint, to whom Allah gave the power of looking upon earth, as though it were a ball in his hand. Most Moslems agree in assigning this origin to the Dayrah, and the Fatihah in honor of the holy man, is still repeated by the pious mariner.

Easterns do not "box the compass" after our fashion: with them each point has its own name, generally derived from some prominent star on the horizon. Of these I subjoin a list as in use amongst the Somal, hoping that it may be useful to Oriental students.

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