truth has been disputed, but now it is generally acknowledged. [FN#5] A French traveller, the Viscount Escayrac de Lanture, was living at Cairo as a native of the East, and preparing for a pilgrimage when I was similarly engaged.  Unfortunately he went to Damascus, where some disturbance compelled him to resume his nationality.  The only European I have met with who visited Meccah without apostatising, is M. Bertolucci, Swedish Consul at Cairo.  This gentleman persuaded the Badawin camel men who were accompanying him to Taif to introduce him in disguise:  he naïvely owns that his terror of discovery prevented his making any observations.  Dr. George A. Wallin, of Finland, performed the Hajj in 1845; but his “somewhat perilous position, and the filthy company of Persians,” were effectual obstacles to his taking notes. [FN#6] No one felt the want of this “silent friend,” more than myself; for though Eastern Arabia would not have been strange to me, the Western regions were a terra incognita.  Through Dr. Norton Shaw, Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, I addressed a paper full of questions to Dr. Wallin, professor of Arabic at the University of Helsingfors.  But that adventurous traveller and industrious Orienta1ist was then, as we afterwards heard with sorrow, no more; so the queries remained unanswered.  In these pages I have been careful to solve all the little financial and domestic difficulties, so perplexing to the “freshman,” whom circumstances compel to conceal his freshness from the prying eyes of friends. [FN#7] “Then came Trafalgar:  would that Nelson had known the meaning of that name! it would have fixed a smile upon his dying lips!” so says the Rider through the Nubian Desert, giving us in a foot note the curious information that “Trafalgar” is an Arabic word, which means the “Cape of Laurels.”  Trafalgar is nothing but a corruption of Tarf al-Gharb-the side or skirt of the West; it being the most occidental point then reached by Arab conquest. [FN#8] In Arabic “Ras al-Tin,” the promontory upon which immortal Pharos once stood.  It is so called from the argile there found and which supported an old pottery. [FN#9] “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the (three) worlds!” a pious ejaculation, which leaves the lips of the True Believer on all occasions of concluding actions. [FN#10] “Bakhshish,” says a modern writer, “is a fee or present which the Arabs (he here means the Egyptians, who got the word from the Persians through the Turks,) claim on all occasions for services you render them, as well as for services they have rendered you.  A doctor visits a patient gratis-the patient or his servant will ask for a bakhshish (largesse); you employ, pay, clothe, and feed a child-the father will demand his bakhshish; you may save the life of an Arab, at the risk of your own, and he will certainly claim a bakhshish.  This bakhshish, in fact, is a sort of alms or tribute, which the poor Arab believes himself entitled to claim from every respectable-looking person.” [FN#11]