My second friend, Haji Wali, I will introduce to the reader in a future chapter; and my two expeditions to Midian have brought him once more into notice.[FN#7]

Long conversations in Persian and Hindustani abridged the tediousness of the voyage, and when we arrived at Bulak, the polite Khudabakhsh insisted upon my making his house my home.  I was unwilling to accept the man’s civility, disliking his looks; but he advanced cogent reasons for changing my mind.  His servant cleared my luggage through the custom-house, and a few minutes after our arrival I found myself in his abode near the Azbakiyah Gardens, sitting in a cool Mashrabiyah[FN#8] that gracefully projected over a garden, and sipping the favourite glass of pomegranate syrup.

As the Wakalahs or Caravanserais were at that time full of pilgrims, I remained with Khudabakhsh ten days or a fortnight.  But at the end of that time my patience was thoroughly exhausted.  My host had become a civilised man, who sat on chairs, who ate with a fork, who talked European politics, and who had learned to admire, if not to understand, liberty-liberal ideas! and was I not flying from such things?  Besides which, we English have a

[p.36]peculiar national quality, which the Indians, with their characteristic acuteness, soon perceived, and described by an opprobrious name.  Observing our solitary habits, that we could not, and would not, sit and talk and sip sherbet and smoke with them, they called us “Jangli"-wild men, fresh caught in the jungle and sent to rule over the land of Hind.[FN#9] Certainly nothing suits us less than perpetual society, an utter want of solitude, when one cannot retire into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one’s shoulder; when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a public dormitory, and give ear to your companions’ snores and mutterings at midnight.[FN#10]

The very essence of Oriental hospitality, however, is this family style of reception, which costs your host neither coin nor trouble.  I speak of the rare tracts in which the old barbarous hospitality still lingers.  You make one more at his eating tray, and an additional mattress appears in the sleeping-room.  When you depart, you leave if you like a little present, merely for a memorial, with your entertainer; he would be offended if you offered it him openly as a remuneration, and you give

[p.37]some trifling sums to the servants.  Thus you will be welcome wherever you go.  If perchance you are detained perforce in such a situation,-which may easily happen to you, medical man,-you have only to make yourself as disagreeable as possible, by calling for all manner of impossible things.  Shame is a passion with Eastern nations.  Your host would blush to point out to you the indecorum of your conduct; and the laws of hospitality oblige him to supply the every want of a guest, even though he be a detenu.