a long time in the country, had formed this opinion.  But when I questioned dancing-girls myself, I found them quite ignorant of any language except Arabic, and knowing nothing relating to the Rommany.  Two Ghawazi whom I saw had, indeed, the peculiarly brilliant eyes and general expression of Gipsies.  The rest appeared to be Egyptian-Arab; and I found on inquiry that one of the latter had really been a peasant girl who till within seven months had worked in the fields, while two others were occupied alternately with field-work and dancing.

At the market in Boulac, Mahomet took me to a number of Rhagarin.  They all resembled the one whom I have described, and were all occupied in selling exactly the same class of articles.  They all differed slightly, as I thought, from the ordinary Egyptians in their appearance, and were decidedly unlike them, in being neither importunate for money nor disagreeable in their manners.  But though they were certainly Gipsies, none of them would speak Rommany, and I doubt very much if they could have done so.

Bonaventura Vulcanius, who in 1597 first gave the world a specimen of Rommany in his curious book “De Literis et Lingua Getarum” (which specimen, by the way, on account of its rarity, I propose to republish in another work), believed that the Gipsies were Nubians; and others, following in his track, supposed they were really Cophtic Christians (Pott, “Die Zigeuner,” &c., Halle, 1844, p. 5).  And I must confess that this recurred forcibly to my memory when, at Minieh, in Egypt, I asked a Copht scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, “La, ana Gipti” ("No, I am a Copht"), pronouncing the word Gipti, or Copht, so that it might readily be taken for “Gipsy.”  And learning that romi is the Cophtic for a man, I was again startled; and when I found tema (tem, land) and other Rommany words in ancient Egyptian (vide Brugsch, “Grammaire,” &c.), it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this strange language.

Other writers long before me attempted to investigate Egyptian Gipsy, but with no satisfactory result.  A German named Seetzen ascertained that there were Gipsies both in Egypt and Syria, and wrote (1806) on the subject a MS., which Pott ("Die Zigeuner,” &c.) cites largely.  Of these Roms he speaks as follows:  “Gipsies are to be found in the entire Osmanli realm, from the limits of Hungary into Egypt.  The Turks call them Tschinganih; but the Syrians and Egyptians, as well as themselves, Nury, in the plural El Nauar.  It was on the 24th November 1806 when I visited a troop of them, encamped with their black tents in an olive grove, to the west side of Naplos.  They were for the greater part of a dirty yellow complexion, with black hair, which hung down on the side from where it was parted in a short plait, and their lips are mulatto-like.” (Seetzen subsequently remarks that their physiognomy is precisely like that of the