Like Castilians, They Consider Labour Humiliating To Any But A Slave; Nor Is This, As A Clever French Author Remarks, By Any Means An Unreasonable Idea, Since Heaven, To Punish Man For Disobedience, Caused Him To Eat Daily Bread By The Sweat Of His Brow.

Besides, there is degradation, moral and physical, in handiwork compared with the freedom of the Desert.

The loom and the file do not conserve courtesy and chivalry like the sword and spear; man “extends his tongue,” to use an Arab phrase, when a cuff and not a stab is to be the consequence of an injurious expression. Even the ruffian becomes polite in California, where his brother-ruffian carries his revolver, and those European nations who were most polished when every gentleman wore a rapier, have become the rudest since Civilisation disarmed them.

By the tariff quoted below it will be evident that Al-Madinah is not a cheap place.[FN#20] Yet the citizens,

[p.11]despite their being generally in debt, manage to live well. Their cookery, like that of Meccah, has borrowed something from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Persia, and India: as all Orientals, they are exceedingly fond of clarified butter.[FN#21]

[p.12]I have seen the boy Mohammed drink off nearly a tumbler-full, although his friends warned him that it would make him as fat as an elephant. When a man cannot enjoy clarified butter in these countries, it is considered a sign that his stomach is out of order, and all my excuses of a melancholic temperament were required to be in full play to prevent the infliction of fried meat swimming in grease, or that guest-dish,[FN#22] rice saturated with melted—perhaps I should say—rancid butter.

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