[p.63]month.  But Ali the Berberi and I were destined to part.  Before a fortnight he stabbed his fellow servant-a Surat lad, who wishing to return home forced his services upon me-and for this trick he received, with his dismissal, 400 blows on the feet by order of the Zabit, or police magistrate.  After this failure I tried a number of servants, Egyptians, Sa’idis,[FN#23] and clean and unclean eating[FN#24] Berberis.  Recommended by different Shaykhs, all had some fatal defect; one cheated recklessly, another robbed me, a third drank, a fourth was always in scrapes for infringing the Julian edict, and the last, a long-legged Nubian, after remaining two days in the house, dismissed me for expressing

[p.64]a determination to travel by sea from Suez to Yambu’.  I kept one man; he complained that he was worked to death:  two-they did nothing but fight; and three-they left me, as Mr. Elwes said of old, to serve myself.  At last, thoroughly tired of Egyptian domestics, and one servant being really sufficient for comfort, as well as suitable to my assumed rank, I determined to keep only the Indian boy.  He had all the defects of his nation; a brave at Cairo, he was an arrant coward at Al-Madinah; the Badawin despised him heartily for his effeminacy in making his camel kneel to dismount, and he could not keep his hands from picking and stealing.  But the choice had its advantages:  his swarthy skin and chubby features made the Arabs always call him an Abyssinian slave, which, as it favoured my disguise, I did not care to contradict; he served well, he was amenable to discipline, and being completely dependent upon me, he was therefore less likely to watch and especially to prate about my proceedings.  As master and man we performed the pilgrimage together; but, on my return to Egypt after the pilgrimage, Shaykh (become Haji) Nur, finding me to be a Sahib,[FN#25] changed for the worse.  He would not work, and reserved all his energy for the purpose of pilfering, which he practised so audaciously upon my friends, as well as upon myself, that he could not be kept in the house.

Perhaps the reader may be curious to see the necessary expenses of a bachelor residing at Cairo.  He must observe, however, in the following list that I was not a strict economist, and, besides that, I was a stranger in the country:  inhabitants and old settlers would live as well for little more than two-thirds the sum.

[p.65]

------------------------------------------Piastres.Fadd

ah. 
House rent at 18 piastres per mensem---------0-------24
Servant at 80 piastres per------do.----------2-------26

Breakfast for	10 eggs----------------------0--------5
self and        Coffee-----------------------0-------10
servant. 	Water melon (now 5 piastres)-1--------0
Two rolls of bread-----------0-------10

2 lbs. of meat---------------2-------20
Two rolls of bread-----------0-------10
Dinner. 	        Vegetables-------------------0-------20