During The Ramazan I Laid In My Stores For The Journey.
These consisted
of tea, coffee, loaf-sugar, rice, dates, biscuit, oil, vinegar,
tobacco, lanterns, and cooking pots, a small
Bell-shaped tent, costing
twelve shillings, and three water-skins for the Desert.[FN#14] The
provisions were placed in a "Kafas" or hamper artistically made of palm
sticks, and in a huge Sahharah, or wooden box, about three feet each
way, covered with leather or skin, and provided with a small lid
fitting into the top.[FN#15] The
[p.126]former, together with my green box containing medicines, and
saddle-bags full of clothes, hung on one side of the camel, a
counterpoise to the big Sahharah on the other flank; the Badawin, like
muleteers, always requiring a balance of weight. On the top of the load
was placed transversely a Shibriyah or cot, on which Shaykh Nur
squatted like a large crow. This worthy had strutted out into the
streets armed with a pair of horse-pistols and a sword almost as long
as himself. No sooner did the mischievous boys of Cairo-they are as bad
as the gamins of Paris and London-catch sight of him than they began to
scream with laughter at the sight of the "Hindi (Indian) in arms,"
till, like a vagrant owl pursued by a flight of larks, he ran back into
the Caravanserai.
Having spent all my ready money at Cairo, I was obliged to renew the
supply. My native acquaintances advised me to take at least eighty
pounds sterling, and considering the expense of outfit for Desert
travelling, the sum did not appear excessive. 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.
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