Osman’s history is a curious one.  He was a Scotchman born, and when very young, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with Fraser’s force.  He was taken prisoner, and according to Mahometan custom, the alternative of death or the Koran was offered to him; he did not choose death, and therefore went through the ceremonies which were necessary for turning him into a good Mahometan.  But what amused me most in his history was this, that very soon after having embraced Islam he was obliged in practice to become curious and discriminating in his new faith, to make war upon Mahometan dissenters, and follow the orthodox standard of the Prophet in fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, who are the Unitarians of the Mussulman world.  The Wahabees were crushed, and Osman returning home in triumph from his holy wars, began to flourish in the world.  He acquired property, and became effendi, or gentleman.  At the time of my visit to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by his brother Mahometans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives.  He affected the same sort of reserve in mentioning them as is generally shown by Orientals.  He invited me, indeed, to see his harem, but he made both his wives bundle out before I was admitted.  He felt, as it seemed to me, that neither of them would bear criticism, and I think that this idea, rather than any motive of sincere jealousy, induced him to keep them out of sight.  The rooms of the harem reminded me of an English nursery rather than of a Mahometan paradise.  One is apt to judge of a woman before one sees her by the air of elegance or coarseness with which she surrounds her home; I judged Osman’s wives by this test, and condemned them both.  But the strangest feature in Osman’s character was his inextinguishable nationality.  In vain they had brought him over the seas in early boyhood; in vain had he suffered captivity, conversion, circumcision; in vain they had passed him through fire in their Arabian campaigns, they could not cut away or burn out poor Osman’s inborn love of all that was Scotch; in vain men called him Effendi; in vain he swept along in eastern robes; in vain the rival wives adorned his harem:  the joy of his heart still plainly lay in this, that he had three shelves of books, and that the books were thoroughbred Scotch—­the Edinburgh this, the Edinburgh that, and above all, I recollect, he prided himself upon the “Edinburgh Cabinet Library.”

The fear of the plague is its forerunner.  It is likely enough that at the time of my seeing poor Osman the deadly taint was beginning to creep through his veins, but it was not till after I had left Cairo that he was visibly stricken.  He died.

As soon as I had seen all that I wanted to see in Cairo and in the neighbourhood I wished to make my escape from a city that lay under the terrible curse of the plague, but Mysseri fell ill, in consequence, I believe, of the hardships which he had been suffering in my service.  After a while he recovered sufficiently to undertake a journey, but then there was some difficulty in procuring beasts of burthen, and it was not till the nineteenth day of my sojourn that I quitted the city.