[p.43]rent, besides five piastres to the man who swept and washed the place.  So that for this month my house-hire amounted to nearly four pence a day.

But I was fortunate enough in choosing the Jamaliyah Wakalah, for I found a friend there.  On board the steamer a fellow-voyager, seeing me sitting alone and therefore as he conceived in discomfort, placed himself by my side and opened a hot fire of kind inquiries.  He was a man about forty-five, of middle size, with a large round head closely shaven, a bull-neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon’s, a thin red beard, and handsome features beaming with benevolence.  A curious dry humour he had, delighting in “quizzing,” but in so quiet, solemn, and quaint a way that before you knew him you could scarcely divine his drift.

“Thank Allah, we carry a doctor!” said my friend more than once, with apparent fervour of gratitude, after he had discovered my profession.  I was fairly taken in by the pious ejaculation, and some days elapsed before the drift of his remark became apparent.

“You doctors,” he explained, when we were more intimate, “what do you do?  A man goes to you for ophthalmia:  it is a purge, a blister, and a drop in the eye!  Is it for fever? well! a purge and kinakina (quinine).  For dysentery? a purge and extract of opium.  Wa’llahi!  I am as good a physician as the best of you,” he would add with a broad grin, “if I only knew the Dirham-birhams,[FN#1]-drams and drachms,-and a few break-jaw Arabic names of diseases.”

Haji Wali[FN#2] therefore emphatically advised me to

[p.44]make bread by honestly teaching languages.  “We are doctor-ridden,” said he, and I found it was the case.

When we lived under the same roof, the Haji and I became fast friends.  During the day we called on each other frequently, we dined together, and passed the evening in a Mosque, or some other place of public pastime.  Coyly at first, but less guardedly as we grew bolder, we smoked the forbidden weed “Hashish,[FN#3]” conversing lengthily the while about that world of which I had seen so much.  Originally from Russia, he also had been a traveller, and in his wanderings he had cast off most of the prejudices of his people.  “I believe in Allah and his Prophet, and in nothing else,” was his sturdy creed; he rejected alchemy, jinnis and magicians, and truly he had a most unoriental distaste for tales of wonder.  When I entered the Wakalah, he constituted himself my cicerone, and especially guarded me against the cheating of trades-men.  By his advice I laid aside the Darwaysh’s gown, the large blue pantaloons, and the short shirt; in fact all connection with Persia and the Persians.  “If you persist in being an ’Ajami,” said the Haji, “you will get yourself into trouble; in Egypt you will be cursed; in Arabia you will be beaten because you are a heretic; you will pay the treble of what other travellers do, and if you fall sick you may die by the roadside.”  After long deliberation about