So, Lamenting My Degeneracy And
The Ill Effects Of Four Years' Domicile In Europe, And Equally
Disquieted In Mind About The Fate Of My Goods And Chattels, I Fell Into
An Uncomfortable Sleep.
[FN#l] The proper hire of a return dromedary from Cairo to Suez is
forty piastres.
But every man is charged in proportion to his rank, and
Europeans generally pay about double.
[FN#2] The tender traveller had better provide himself with a pair of
stirrups, but he will often find, when on camel back, that his legs are
more numbed by hanging down, than by the Arab way of crossing them
before and beneath the pommel. He must, however, be careful to inspect
his saddle, and, should bars of wood not suit him, to have them covered
with stuffed leather. And again, for my part, I would prefer riding a
camel with a nose-ring,-Mongol and Sindian fashion,-to holding him, as
the Egyptians do, with a halter, or to guiding him,-Wahhabiwise,-with a
stick.
[FN#3] "O pilgrim!" The Egyptians write the word Hajj, and pronounce
Hagg. In Persia, India, and Turkey, it becomes Haji. These are mere
varieties of form, derived from one and the same Arabic root.
[FN#4] The Egyptians and Arabs will not address "Salam" to an infidel;
the Moslems of India have no such objection. This, on the banks of the
Nile, is the revival of an old prejudice. Alexander of Alexandria, in
his circular letter, describes the Arian heretics as "men whom it is
not lawful to salute, or to bid God-speed."
[FN#5] It is Prince Puckler Muskau, if I recollect rightly, who
mentions that in his case a pair of dark spectacles produced a marked
difference of apparent temperature, whilst travelling over the sultry
sand of the Desert. I have often remarked the same phenomenon. The
Arabs, doubtless for some reason of the kind, always draw their
head-kerchiefs, like hoods, far over their brows, and cover up their
mouths, even when the sun and wind are behind them. Inhabitants of the
Desert are to be recognised by the net-work of wrinkles traced in the
skin round the orbits, the result of half-closing their eyelids; but
this is done to temper the intensity of the light.
[FN#6] Their own pipe-tubes were of coarse wood, in shape somewhat
resembling the German porcelain pipe. The bowl was of soft stone,
apparently steatite, which, when fresh, is easily fashioned with a
knife. In Arabia the Badawin, and even the townspeople, use on journeys
an earthen tube from five to six inches shorter than the English
"clay," thicker in the tube, with a large bowl, and coloured
yellowish-red. It contains a handful of tobacco, and the smoker emits
puffs like a chimney. In some of these articles the bowl forms a
rectangle with the tube; in others, the whole is an unbroken curve,
like the old Turkish Meerschaum.
[FN#7] See Wallin's papers, published in the Journals of the Royal
Geographical Society.
[FN#8] Shurum, (plural of Sharm, a creek), a word prefixed to the
proper names of three small ports in the Sinaitic peninsula.
[FN#9] Tawarah, plural of Turi, an inhabitant of Tur or Sinai.
[FN#10] This feature did not escape the practised eye of Denon.
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