baby in her father’s arms.  Omar leant against the fournaise in his house-dress, a white shirt open at the throat and white drawers reaching to the knees, with the red tarboosh and red and yellow kufyeh (silk handkerchief) round it turban-wise, contemplating them with his great, soft eyes.  The two young men made an excellent contrast between Upper and Lower Egypt.  Mohammed is the true Arab type—­coffee-brown, thin, spare, sharp-featured, elegant hands and feet, bright glittering small eyes and angular jaw—­not a handsome Arab, but bien characterise.  Omar, the colour of new boxwood or old ivory, pale, with eyes like a cow, full lips, full chin and short nose, not the least negro, but perfectly Egyptian, the eyes wide apart—­unlike the Arab—­moustache like a woman’s eyebrow, curly brown hair, bad hands and feet and not well made, but graceful in movement and still more in countenance, very inferior in beauty to the pure Arab blood which prevails here, but most sweet in expression.  He is a true Akh-ul-Benat (brother of girls), and truly chivalrous to Hareem.  How astonished Europeans would be to hear Omar’s real opinion of their conduct to women.  He mentioned some Englishman who had divorced his wife and made her frailty public.  You should have seen him spit on the floor in abhorrence.  Here it is quite blackguard not to forfeit the money and take all the blame in a divorce.

Friday.—­We have had better weather again, easterly wind and pretty cool, and I am losing the cough and languor which the damp of the Simoom brought me.  Sheykh Yussuf has just come back from Keneh, whither he and the Kadee went on their donkeys for some law business.  He took our saddle bags at Omar’s request, and brought us back a few pounds of sugar and some rice and tobacco (isn’t it like Fielding’s novels?).  It is two days’ journey, so they slept in the mosque at Koos half way.  I told Yussuf how Suleyman’s child has the smallpox and how Mohammed only said it was Min Allah (from God) when I suggested that his baby should be vaccinated at once.  Yussuf called him in and said:  ’Oh man, when thou wouldst build a house dost thou throw the bricks in a heap on the ground and say the building thereof is from God, or dost thou use the brains and hands which God has given thee, and then pray to Him to bless thy work?  In all things do the best of thy understanding and means, and then say Min Allah, for the end is with Him!’ There is not a pin to choose in fatalism here between Muslim and Christian, the lazy, like Mohammed and Suleyman (one Arab the other Copt), say Min Allah or any form of dawdle you please; but the true Muslim doctrine is just what Yussuf laid down—­’do all you can and be resigned to whatever be the result.’ Fais ce que dois advienne qui pourra is good doctrine.  In fact, I am very much puzzled to discover the slightest difference between Christian and Muslim morality or belief—­if you exclude