the mosquitos sang Io Paeans over our prostrate forms throughout the twenty-four hours.  I spare the reader the enumeration of the other Egyptian plagues that infested the place.  After the first day’s trial, we determined to spend the hours of light in the passages, lying upon our boxes or rugs, smoking, wrangling, and inspecting one another’s chests.  The latter occupation was a fertile source of disputes, for nothing was more common than for a friend to seize an article belonging to another, and to swear by the Apostle’s beard that he admired it, and, therefore, would not return it.  The boy Mohammed and Shaykh Nur, who had been intimates the first day, differed in opinion on the second, and on the third came to pushing each other against the wall.  Sometimes we went into the Bazar, a shady street flanked with poor little shops, or we sat in the coffee-house,[FN#16] drinking hot saltish water tinged with burnt bean, or we prayed in one of three tumble-down old Mosques, or we squatted upon the pier, lamenting the want of Hammams, and bathing in the tepid sea.[FN#17] I presently came to the conclusion that

[p.174]Suez as a “watering-place” is duller even than Dover.  The only society we found, excepting an occasional visitor, was that of a party of Egyptian women, who with their husbands and families occupied some rooms adjoining ours.  At first they were fierce, and used bad language, when the boy Mohammed and I,-whilst Omar Effendi was engaged in prayer, and the rest were wandering about the town,-ventured to linger in the cool passage, where they congregated, or to address a facetious phrase to them.  But hearing that I was a Hakim-bashi-for fame had promoted me to the rank of a “Physician General” at Suez-all discovered some ailments.  They began prudently with requesting me to display the effects of my drugs by dosing myself, but they ended submissively by swallowing the nauseous compounds.  To this succeeded a primitive form of flirtation, which mainly consisted of the demand direct.  The most charming of the party was one Fattumah[FN#18], a plump-personed dame, fast verging upon her thirtieth year, fond of a little flattery, and possessing, like all her people, a most voluble tongue.  The refrain of every conversation was “Marry me, O Fattumah!  O daughter!  O female pilgrim!” In vain the lady would reply, with a coquettish movement of the sides, a toss of the head, and a flirting manipulation of her head-veil,

[p.175]"I am mated, O young man!"-it was agreed that she, being a person of polyandrous propensities, could support the weight of at least three matrimonial engagements.  Sometimes the entrance of the male Fellahs[FN#19] interrupted these little discussions, but people of our respectability and nation were not to be imposed upon by such husbands.  In their presence we only varied the style of conversation-inquiring the amount of “Mahr,” or marriage settlement, deriding the cheapness of womanhood in Egypt, and requiring