the throat of a foe; secondly, he ejaculates, “In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful!” before wetting his lips; thirdly, he imbibes the contents, swallowing them, not sipping them as he ought to do, and ending with a satisfied grunt; fourthly, before setting down the cup, he sighs forth, “Praise be to Allah"-of which you will understand the full meaning in the Desert; and, fifthly, he replies, “May Allah make it pleasant to thee!” in answer to his friend’s polite “Pleasurably and health!” Also he is careful to avoid the irreligious action of drinking the pure element in a standing position, mindful, however, of the three recognised exceptions, the fluid of the Holy Well Zemzem, water distributed in charity, and that which remains after Wuzu, the lesser ablution.  Moreover, in Europe, where both extremities are used indiscriminately, one forgets the exclusive use of the right hand, the manipulation of the rosary, the abuse of the chair,-your genuine Oriental gathers up his legs, looking almost as comfortable in it as a sailor upon the back of a high-trotting -the rolling gait with the toes straight to the front, the grave look and the habit of pious ejaculations.

Our voyage over the “summer sea” was eventless.  In a steamer of two or three thousand tons you discover

[p.7]the once dreaded, now contemptible, “stormy waters” only by the band-a standing nuisance be it remarked-performing

“There we lay
All the day,
In the Bay of Biscay, O!”

The sight of glorious Trafalgar[FN#7]| excites none of the sentiments with which a tedious sail used to invest it.  “Gib” is, probably, better known to you, by Theophile Gautier and Eliot Warburton, than the regions about Cornhill; besides which, you anchor under the Rock exactly long enough to land and to breakfast.  Malta, too, wears an old familiar face, which bids you order a dinner and superintend the iceing of claret (beginning of Oriental barbarism), instead of galloping about on donkey-back through fiery air in memory of St. Paul and White-Cross Knights.  But though our journey might be called monotonous, there was nothing to complain of.  The ship was in every way comfortable; the cook, strange to say, was good, and the voyage lasted long enough, and not too long.  On the evening of the thirteenth day after our start, the big-trowsered pilot, so lovely in his deformities to western eyes, made his appearance, and the good screw “Bengal” found herself at anchor off the Headland of Clay.[FN#8]

Having been invited to start from the house of a kind friend, John W. Larking, I disembarked with him, and