The reverse of the brilliant side of the medal is sad enough:  deserted palaces, and crowded hovels scarce good enough for pigstyes.  ’One day man see his dinner, and one other day none at all,’ as Omar observes; and the children are shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and women under all their difficulties.  The faces are all sad and rather what the Scotch call ‘dour,’ not mechant at all, but harsh, like their voices.  All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the ‘breasts like pomegranates’ of their poetry.  A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to shake hands and look at us.  She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil, und weiter nichts, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart gown which the village women admired so much, shook hands again with the air of a princess, wished me health and happiness, and strode off across the graveyard like a stately ghost.  She was on a journey all alone, and somehow it looked very solemn and affecting to see her walking away towards the desert in the setting sun like Hagar.  All is so Scriptural in the country here.  Sally called out in the railroad, ’There is Boaz, sitting in the cornfield’; and so it was, and there he has sat for how many thousand years,—­and Sakna sang just like Miriam in one war-song.

Wednesday.—­My contract was drawn up and signed by the American Vice-Consul to-day, and my Reis kissed my hand in due form, after which I went to the bazaar to buy the needful pots and pans.  The transaction lasted an hour.  The copper is so much per oka, the workmanship so much; every article is weighed by a sworn weigher and a ticket sent with it.  More Arabian Nights.  The shopkeeper compares notes with me about numerals, and is as much amused as I. He treats me to coffee and a pipe from a neighbouring shop while Omar eloquently depreciates the goods and offers half the value.  A water-seller offers a brass cup of water; I drink, and give the huge sum of twopence, and he distributes the contents of his skin to the crowd (there always is a crowd) in my honour.  It seems I have done a pious action.  Finally a boy is called to carry the batterie de cuisine, while Omar brandishes a gigantic kettle which he has picked up a little bruised for four shillings.  The boy has a donkey which I mount astride a l’Arabe, while the boy carries all the copper things on his head.  We are rather a grand procession, and quite enjoy the fury of the dragomans and other leeches who hang on the English at such independent proceedings, and Omar gets reviled for spoiling the trade by being cook, dragoman, and all in one.