sure that is not so, I often find him praying in the room where Sally sits at work, which is a clean, quiet place.  Yussuf went and joined him there yesterday evening, and prayed with him, and gave him some religious instruction quite undisturbed by Sally and her needlework, and I am continually complimented on not hating the Muslims.  Yussuf promises me letters to some Alim in Cairo when I go there again, that I may be shown the Azhar (the great college).  Omar had told him that I refused to go with a janissary from the Consul for fear of giving offence to any very strict Muslims, which astonished him much.  He says his friends shall dress me in their women’s clothes and take me in.  I asked whether as a concealment of my religion, and he said no, only there were ‘thousands’ of young men, and it would be ‘more delicate’ that they should not stare and talk about my face.

Seleem told me a very pretty grammatical quibble about ‘son’ and ‘prophet’ (apropos of Christ) on a verse in the Gospel, depending on the reduplicative sign [Arabic sign for sheddeh] (sheddeh) over one letter; he was just as put out when I reminded him that it was written in Greek, as our amateur theologians are if you say the Bible was not originally composed in English.  However, I told him that many Christians in England, Germany, and America did not believe that Seyyidna Eesa was God, but only the greatest of prophets and teachers, and that I was myself of that opinion.  He at once declared that that was sufficient, that all such had ‘received guidance,’ and were not ‘among the rejected’; how could they be, since such Christians only believed the teaching of Eesa, which was true, and not the falsifications of the priests and bishops (the bishops always ‘catch it,’ as schoolboys say).  I was curious to hear whether on the strength of this he would let out any further intolerance against the Copts, but he said far less and far less bitterly than I have heard from Unitarians, and debited the usual most commonplace, common-sense kind of arguments on the subject.  I fancy it would not be very palatable to many Unitarians, to be claimed mir nichts dir nichts as followers of el-Islam; but if people really wish to convert in the sense of improving, that door is open, and no other.

Monday, 7_th_.—­The steamer is come down already and will, I suppose, go on to-morrow, so I must finish this letter to go by it.  I have not received any letter for some time, and am anxiously expecting the post.  We have now settled into quite warm weather ways, no more going out at mid-day.  It is now broiling, and I have been watching eight tall fine blacks swimming and capering about, their skins shining like otters’ fur when wet.  They belong to a gellaab—­a slave-dealer’s boat.  The beautiful thing is to see the men and boys at work among the green corn, the men half naked and the boys wholly so; in the sun their brown skins look just like dark clouded amber—­semi-transparent, so fine are they.