I Should Have Found Some Difficulty In Raising The Money Had It Not Been For The Kindness Of A Friend At Alexandria, John Thurburn, Now, I Regret To Say, No More, And Mr. Sam Shepheard, Then Of Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo, Presently A Landed Proprietor Near Rugby, And Now Also Gone.

My Indians scrutinised the diminutive square of paper[FN#16]-the

[P.127]letter of credit-as a raven may sometimes be seen peering, with head askance, into the interior of a suspected marrow-bone. "Can this be a bona-fide draft?" they mentally inquired. And finally they offered, politely, to write to England for me, to draw the money, and to forward it in a sealed bag directed "Al-Madinah." I need scarcely say that such a style of transmission would, in the case of precious metals, have left no possible chance of its safe arrival. When the difficulty was overcome, I bought fifty pounds' worth of German dollars (Maria Theresas), and invested the rest in English and Turkish sovereigns.[FN#17] The gold I myself carried; part of the silver I sewed up in Shaykh Nur's leather waistbelt, and part was packed in the boxes, for this reason,-when Badawin begin plundering a respectable man, if they find a certain amount of ready money in his baggage, they do not search his person. If they find none they proceed to a bodily inspection, and if his waist-belt be empty they are rather disposed to rip open his stomach, in the belief that he must have some peculiarly ingenious way of secreting valuables.

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