Away down here among the mountains and out of the world, these people see nothing more curious than their next-door neighbors from year to year; they take the most ridiculous interest in such small affairs as my note-book and pencil, and everything about me seems to strike them as peculiar.

The entire village, as usual, assembles to see me dispose of the eatables so generously provided; and later in the evening there is another highly-expectant assembly waiting around, out of curiosity, to see what sort of a figure a Ferenghi cuts at his evening devotions.  Poor benighted followers of the False Prophet, how little they comprehend us Christians!  Suddenly it seems to dawn upon the mind of the simple old Khan that, being a stranger in a strange land, I might, perchance, be a trifle mixed about my bearings, and so he kindly indicates the direction of Mecca.  When informed that the Ingilis never prostrate themselves toward Mecca and say “Allah-il-allah!” they evince the greatest astonishment; and then the strange, unnatural impiousness of people who never address themselves to Allah nor prostrate toward the Holy City, impresses their simple minds with something akin to the feeling entertained among certain of ourselves toward extra dare-devil characters, and they seem to take a deeper and kindlier interest in me than ever.  The disappointment at not seeing what I look like at prayers is more than offset by the additional novelty imparted to my person by the, to them, strange and sensational omission.

They seem greatly disappointed to learn that I am going away in the morning; they have plenty of toke-me-morge, pillau, mast, and sheerah, they say—­plenty of everything; and they want me to stay with them always.  Revolving the matter over in my mind, I am forcibly struck with the calm, reposeful state of Nukhab society; and what a brilliant field of enterprise for an ambitious person the place would be.  Turned Mussulman, joined in wedlock to three or four sore-eyed village damsels; worshipped as a sort of strange, superior being, hakim and eye-water dispenser; consulted as a walking store-house of occult philosophy on all occasions; endeavoring to educate the people up to habits of all-round cleanliness; chiding the mothers for allowing the flies to swarm and devour the poor little babies’ eyes—­all this, for toke-me-morge, pillau, mast, and sheerah, twice or thrice a day!  Involuntarily my eye roams over the gladsome countenances of the eligible portion of my female auditors, as though driven by this whimsical flight of fancy to the necessity of at once making a choice.  There is only one present with any pretence to comeliness; and embarrassed, no doubt, by the extreme tenderness of the stranger’s glance, she shrinks from view behind an aged and ugly person whom I take to be her mother.

Everybody stops to see what a Ferenghi looks like en deshabille, and when I am snugly sandwiched between the quilts provided, they gather about me and peer curiously down into my face.