I was forced to flog Mabrook yesterday for smoking on the sly, a grave offence here on the part of a boy; it is considered disrespectful; so he was ordered, with much parade, to lie down, and Omar gave him two cuts with a rope’s end, an apology for a flogging which would have made an Eton boy stare.  The stick here is quite nominal, except in official hands.  I can’t say Mabrook seemed at all impressed, for he was laughing heartily with Omar in less than ten minutes; but the affair was conducted with as much solemnity as an execution.

‘Sheykh’ Stanley’s friend, Gezawee, has married his negro slave to his own sister, on the plea that he was the best young man he knew.  What would a Christian family say to such an arrangement?

My boat is beautifully buoyant now, and has come up by the bows in fine style.  I have not sailed her yet, but have doubt she will ‘walk well’ as the Arabs say.  Omar got 10 pounds by the sale of old wood and nails, and also gave me 2000 piastres, nearly 12 pounds, which the workmen had given him as a sort of backsheesh.  They all pay one, two or three piastres daily to any wakeel (agent) who superintends; that is his profit, and it is enormous at that rate.  I said, ‘Why did you not refuse it?’ But Omar replied they had pay enough after that reduction, which is always made from them, and that in his opinion therefore, it came out of the master’s pocket, and was ‘cheatery.’  How people have been talking nonsense about Jamaica chez vous.  I have little doubt Eyre did quite right, and still less doubt that the niggers have had enough of the sort of provocation which I well know, to account for the outbreak.  Baker’s effusion is a very poor business.  There may be blacks like tigers (and whites too in London for that matter).  I myself have seen at least five sorts of blacks (negroes, not Arabs), more unlike each other than Swedes are unlike Spaniards; and many are just like ourselves.  Of course they want governing with a strong hand, like all ignorant, childish creatures.  But I am fully convinced that custom and education are the only real differences between one set of men and another, their inner nature is the same all the world over.

My Reis spoke such a pretty parable the other day that I must needs write it.  A Coptic Reis stole some of my wood, which we got back by force and there was some reviling of the Nazarenes in consequence from Hoseyn and Ali; but Reis Mohammed said:  ’Not so; Girgis is a thief, it is true, but many Christians are honest; and behold, all the people in the world are like soldiers, some wear red and some blue; some serve on foot, others on horseback, and some in ships; but all serve one Sultan, and each fights in the regiment in which the Sultan has placed him, and he who does his duty best is the best man, be his coat red or blue or black.’  I said, ’Excellent words, oh Reis, and fit to be spoken from the best of pulpits.’  It is surprising what happy