and wheat conveyed down the Nile in flood to the capital is carried on camel-back across the Desert.  At sunrise they eat the Fatur, or breakfast, which in summer consists of a ‘fatirah,’ a kind of muffin, or of bread and treacle.  In winter it is more substantial, being generally a mixture of lentils and rice,[FN#35] with clarified butter poured over it, and a ‘kitchen’ of pickled lime or stewed onions.  At this season they greatly enjoy the ‘ful mudammas’ (boiled horse-beans),[FN#36] eaten with an abundance of linseed oil, into which they steep bits of bread.  The beans form, with carbon-generating matter, a highly nutritive diet, which, if the stomach can digest it,-the pulse is never shelled,-gives great strength.  About the middle of the day comes ‘Al-Ghada,’ a light dinner of wheaten bread, with dates, onions or cheese:  in the hot season melons and cooling

[p.183] fruits are preferred, especially by those who have to face the sun. ‘Al-Asha,’ or supper, is served about half an hour after sunset; at this meal all but the poorest classes eat meat.  Their favourite flesh, as usual in this part of the world, is mutton; beef and goat are little prized.[FN#37]”

The people of Suez are a finer and fairer race than the Cairenes.  The former have more the appearance of Arabs:  their dress is more picturesque, their eyes are carefully darkened with Kohl, and they wear sandals, not slippers.  They are, according to all accounts, a turbulent and somewhat fanatic set, fond of quarrels, and slightly addicted to “pronunciamentos.”  The general programme of one of these latter diversions is said to be as follows.  The boys will first be sent by their fathers about the town in a disorderly mob, and ordered to cry out “Long live the Sultan!” with its usual sequel, “Death to the Infidels!” The Infidels, Christians or others, must hear and may happen to resent this; or possibly the governor, foreseeing a disturbance, orders an ingenuous youth or two to be imprisoned, or to be caned by the police.  Whereupon some person, rendered influential by wealth or religious reputation, publicly complains that the Christians are all in all, and that in these evil days Al-Islam is going to destruction.  On this occasion the speaker conducts himself with such insolence, that the governor perforce consigns him to confinement, which exasperates the populace still more.  Secret meetings are now convened, and in them the chiefs of corporations assume a prominent position.  If the disturbance be intended by its main-spring to subside quietly, the conspirators are allowed to take their own way; they will drink copiously, become lions about midnight, and recover their hare-hearts before noon next