It is assumed by all ranks, ages, and creeds; by the nobleman who has been disgraced at court, and by the peasant who is too idle to till the ground; by Dives, who is weary of life, and by Lazarus, who begs his bread from door to door.  Further, the Darwaysh is allowed to ignore ceremony and politeness, as one who ceases to appear upon the stage of life; he may pray or not, marry or remain single as he pleases, be respectable in cloth of frieze as in cloth of gold, and no one asks him-the chartered vagabond-

[p.15]Why he comes here? or Wherefore he goes there?  He may wend his way on foot alone, or ride his Arab mare followed by a dozen servants; he is equally feared without weapons, as swaggering through the streets armed to the teeth.  The more haughty and offensive he is to the people, the more they respect him; a decided advantage to the traveller of choleric temperament.  In the hour of imminent danger, he has only to become a maniac, and he is safe; a madman in the East, like a notably eccentric character in the West, is allowed to say or do whatever the spirit directs.  Add to this character a little knowledge of medicine, a “moderate skill in magic, and a reputation for caring for nothing but study and books,” together with capital sufficient to save you from the chance of starving, and you appear in the East to peculiar advantage.  The only danger of the “Mystic Path"[FN#25] is, that the Darwaysh’s ragged coat not unfrequently covers the cut-throat, and, if seized in the society of such a “brother,” you may reluctantly become his companion, under the stick or on the stake.  For be it known, Darwayshes are of two orders, the Sharai, or those who conform to religion, and the Bi-Sharai, or Luti, whose practices are hinted at by their own tradition that “he we daurna name” once joined them for a week, but at the end of that time left them in dismay, and returned to whence he came.

[FN#1] “Remembering . . . . reason,” afterwards altered by the author to “much disliking, if fact must be told, my impolitic habit of telling political truths, (in 1851 I had submitted to the Court of Directors certain remarks upon the subject of Anglo-Indian misrule:  I need hardly say that the publication was refused with many threats), and not unwilling to mortify my supporter (his colleague, Colonel W. Sykes), refused his sanction, alleging as a no-reason,” et seq. [FN#2] The vagrant, the merchant, and the philosopher, amongst Orientals, are frequently united in the same person. [FN#3] In a communication made to the Royal Geographical Society, and published in the 24th vol. of the Journal, I have given my reasons for naturalising this word.  It will be used in the following pages to express a “hill water-course, which rolls a torrent after rain, and is either partially or wholly dry during the droughts.”  It is, in fact, the Indian “Nullah, or Nala.” [FN#4] “In provinciis Arabum, ait Ibn Haukal, nullus dignoscitur fluvius, aut mare quod navigia ferat.”  This