[FN#250] The idea would readily occur in Egypt where the pulex is still a plague although the Sultan is said to hold his court at Tiberias.  “Male and female” says the rouge, otherwise it would be easy to fill a bushel with fleas.  The insect was unknown to older India according to some and was introduced by strangers.  This immigration is quite possible.  In 1863 the jigger (P. penetrans) was not found in Western Africa; when I returned there in 1882 it had passed over from the Brazil and had become naturalised on the equatorial African seaboard. the Arabs call shrimps and prawns “sea-fleas” (barguth al-bahr) showing an inland race. (See Pilgrimage i. 322.)

[FN#251] Submission to the Sultan and the tidings of his well-being should content every Eastern subject.  But, as Oriental history shows, the form of government is a Despotism tempered by assassination.  And under no rule is man socially freer and his condition contrasts strangely with the grinding social tyranny which characterises every mode of democracy or constitutionalism, i.e. political equality.

[FN#252] Here the text has “Markub” = a shoe; elsewhere “Na’al” = a sandal, especially with wooden sole.  In classical Arabia, however, “Na’al” may be a shoe, a horse-shoe (iron-plate, not rim like ours).  The Bresl.  Edit. has “Wata,” any foot-gear.

[FN#253] Water-melons (batayikh) says the Mac.  Edit. a misprint for Aruz or rice.  Water-melons are served up raw cut into square mouthfuls, to be eaten with rice and meat.  They serve excellently well to keep the palate clean and cool.

[FN#254] The text recounts the whole story over again — more than European patience can bear.

[FN#255] The usual formula when telling an improbable tale.  But here it is hardly called for:  the same story is told (on weak authority) of the Alewife, the Three Graziers and Attorney-General Nay (temp.  James ii. 1577-1634) when five years old (Journ.  Asiat.  Soc.  N.S. xxx. 280).  The same feat had been credited to Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor in A.D. 1540-1617 (Chalmers, Biographical Dictionary xxiii. 267-68).  But the story had already found its way into the popular jest-books such as “Tales and Quick Answers, very Mery and Pleasant to Rede” (1530); “Jacke of Dover’s Quest of Inquirie for the Foole of all Fooles” (1604) under the title “The Foole of Westchester”, and in “Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King’s Fool.”  The banker-bard Rogers (in Italy) was told a similar story concerning a widow of the Lambertini house (xivth centry).  Thomas Wright (Introducition to the Seven Sages) says he had met the tale in Latin( xiiith-xivth centuries) and a variant in the “Nouveaux Contes a rire (Amsterdam 1737), under the title “Jugement Subtil du Duc d’Ossone contre Deux Marchands.”  Its origin is evidently the old Sindibad-namah translated from Syriac into Greek ("Syntipas,” xith century); into Hebrew (Mishle Sandabar, xiith century) and from