between his legs, shouldered the donkey, and ran on.  His way of keeping awake is original; the nights are still cold, so he takes off all his clothes, rolls them up and lays them under his head, and the cold keeps him quite lively.  I never saw so powerful, active and healthy an animal.  He was full of stories how he had had 1,000 stripes of the courbash on his feet and 500 on his loins at one go.  ‘Why?’ I asked.  ’Why, I stuck a knife into a cawass who ordered me to carry water-melons; I said I was not his donkey; he called me worse:  my blood got up, and so!—­and the Pasha to whom the cawass belonged beat me.  Oh, it was all right, and I did not say “ach” once, did I?’ (addressing another).  He clearly bore no malice, as he felt no shame.  He has a grand romance about a city two days’ journey from here, in the desert, which no one finds but by chance, after losing his way; and where the ground is strewed with valuable anteekehs (antiquities).  I laughed, and said, ‘Your father would have seen gold and jewels.’  ‘True,’ said he, ’when I was young, men spit on a statue or the like, when they turned it up in digging, and now it is a fortune to find one.’

March 31, 1866:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. March 31, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

As for me I am much better again; the cough has subsided, I really think the Arab specific, camel’s milk, has done me great good.  I have mended ever since I took it.  It has the merit of being quite delicious.  Yesterday I was much amused when I went for my afternoon’s drink, to find Sheriff in a great taking at having been robbed by a woman, under his very nose.  He saw her gathering hummuz from a field under his charge, and went to order her off, whereupon she coolly dropped the end of her boordeh which covered the head and shoulders, effectually preventing him from going near her; made up her bundle and walked off.  His respect for the Hareem did not, however, induce him to refrain from strong language.

M. Brune has made very pretty drawings of the mosque here, both outside and in; it is a very good specimen of modern Arab architecture; and he won’t believe it could be built without ground plan, elevations, etc., which amuses the people here, who build without any such inventions.

The harvest here is splendid this year, such beans and wheat, and prices have fallen considerably in both:  but meat, butter, etc., remain very dear.  My fame as a Hakeemeh has become far too great, and on market-days I have to shut up shop.  Yesterday a very handsome woman came for medicine to make her beautiful, as her husband had married another who teazed her, and he rather neglected her.  And a man offered me a camel load of wheat if I would read something over him and his wife to make them have children.  I don’t try to explain to them how very irrational they are but use the more