to be furnished on the spot with brides at the rate of ten shillings a head.[FN#20] More often the amiable Fattumah-the fair sex in this country, though passing frail, have the best tempers in the world-would laugh at our impertinences.  Sometimes vexed by our imitating her Egyptian accent, mimicking her gestures, and depreciating her country-women,[FN#21] she would wax wroth, and order us to be gone, and stretch out her forefinger-a sign that she wished to put out our eyes, or adjure Allah to cut the hearts out of our bosoms.  Then

[p.176]the “Marry me, O Fattumah, O daughter, O female pilgrim!” would give way to Y’al Ago-o-oz! (O old woman and decrepit!) “O daughter of sixty sires, and fit only to carry wood to market!"-whereupon would burst a storm of wrath, at the tail of which all of us, like children, starting upon our feet, rushed out of one another’s way.  But-"qui se dispute, s’adore"-when we again met all would be forgotten, and the old tale be told over de novo.  This was the amusement of the day.  At night we men, assembling upon the little terrace, drank tea, recited stories, read books, talked of our travels, and indulged in various pleasantries.  The great joke was the boy Mohammed’s abusing all his companions to their faces in Hindustani, which none but Shaykh Nur and I could understand; the others, however, guessed his intention, and revenged themselves by retorts of the style uncourteous in the purest Hijazi.

I proceed to offer a few more extracts from Mr. Levick’s letter about Suez and the Suezians.  “It appears that the number of pilgrims who pass through Suez to Meccah has of late been steadily on the decrease.  When I first came here (in 1838) the pilgrims who annually embarked at this port amounted to between 10,000 and 12,000, the shipping was more numerous, and the merchants were more affluent.[FN#22] I have ascertained from a special register kept in the government archives that in the Moslem year 1268 (A.D. 1851-52) the exact number that passed through was 4893.”

“In 1269 A.H. (A.D. 1852-53) it had shrunk to 3136.  The natives assign the falling off to various causes, which [p.177]I attribute chiefly to the indirect effect of European civilisation upon the Moslem powers immediately in contact with it.  The heterogeneous mass of pilgrims is composed of people of all classes, colours, and costumes.  One sees among them, not only the natives of countries contiguous to Egypt, but also a large proportion of Central Asians from Bokhara, Persia, Circassia, Turkey, and the Crimea, who prefer this route by way of Constantinople to the difficult, expensive and dangerous caravan-line through the Desert from Damascus and Baghdad.  The West sends us Moors, Algerines, and Tunisians, and Inner Africa a mass of sable Takrouri,[FN#23] and others from Bornou, the Sudan,[FN#24] Ghadamah near the Niger, and Jabarti from the Habash.[FN#25]”

“The Suez ship-builders are an influential body of men, originally Candiots and Alexandrians.  When Mohammed Ali fitted out his fleet for the Hijaz war, he transported a number of Greeks to Suez, and the children now exercise their fathers’ craft.  There are at present three great builders at this place.  Their principal difficulty