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. "Eyes long, almond-shaped, half shut, and languishing, and turned up at the outer corner, as if habitually fatigued by the light and heat of the sun; cheeks round, &c.," (Voyage en Egypt). The learned Frenchman's description of the ancient Egyptians applies in most points to the Turi Badawin. [FN#11] "And he" (Ishmael) "dwelt in the wilderness of Paran," (Wady Firan?) "and his mother took him a wife, out of the land of Egypt," (Gen. xxi. 21). I wonder that some geographers have attempted to identify Massa, the son of Ishmael, (Gen. xxv. 14), with Meccah, when in verse 18 of the same chapter we read, "And they" (the twelve princes, sons of Ishmael) "dwelt from Havilah unto Shur." This asserts, as clearly as language can, that the posterity of, or the race typified by, Ishmael,-the Syro-Egyptian,-occupied only the northern parts of the peninsula. Their habitat is not even included in Arabia by those writers who bound the country on the north by an imaginary line drawn from Ras Mohammed to the mouths of the Euphrates. The late Dr. J. Wilson ("Lands of the Bible"), repeated by Eliot Warburton ("Crescent and Cross"), lays stress upon the Tawarah tradition, that they are Benu Isra'il converted to Al-Islam, considering it a fulfilment of the prophecy, "that a remnant of Israel shall dwell in Edom." With due deference to so illustrious an Orientalist and Biblical scholar as was Dr. Wilson, I believe that most modern Moslems, being ignorant that Jacob was the first called "prince with God," apply the term Benu-Isra'il to all the posterity of Abraham, not to Jews only. [FN#12] In 1879 the Gates of Suez are a thing of the past; and it is not easy to find where they formerly stood. [FN#13] In the mouth of a Turk, no epithet is more contemptuous than that of "Fellah ibn Fellah,"-"boor, son of a boor!" The Osmanlis have, as usual, a semi-religious tradition to account for the superiority of their nation over the Egyptians. When the learned doctor, Abu Abdullah Mohammed bin Idris al-Shafe'i, returned from Meccah to the banks of the Nile, he mounted, it is said, a donkey belonging to one of the Asinarii of Bulak. Arriving at the Caravanserai, he gave the man ample fare, whereupon the Egyptian, putting forth his hand, and saying, "hat" (give!) called for more. The doctor doubled the fee; still the double was demanded. At last the divine's purse was exhausted, and the proprietor of the donkey waxed insolent. A wandering Turk seeing this, took all the money from the Egyptian, paid him his due, solemnly kicked him, and returned the rest to Al-Shafe'i, who asked him his name-"Osman"-and his nation-the "Osmanli,"-blessed him, and prophesied to his countrymen supremacy over the Fellahs and donkey boys of Egypt. [FN#14] From Samm, the poison-wind. Vulgar and most erroneously called the Simoon. [FN#15] Hugh Murray derives this word from the Egyptian, and quoting Strabo and Abulfeda makes it synonymous with Auasis and Hyasis.

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