asked him, when he insisted upon my having been born somewhere, to guess for himself.  To my joy he claimed me for a brother Pathan, and in course of conversation he declared himself to be the nephew of an Afghan merchant, a gallant old man who had been civil to me at Cairo.  We then sat smoking together with “effusion.”  Becoming confidential, he complained that he, a Sunni, or orthodox Moslem, had been abused, maltreated, and beaten by his fellow-travellers, the heretical Persian pilgrims.  I naturally offered to arm my party, to take up our cudgels, and to revenge my compatriot.  This thoroughly Sulaymanian style of doing business could not fail to make him sure of his man.  He declined, however, wisely remembering that he had nearly a fortnight of the Persians’ society still to endure.  But he promised himself the gratification, when he reached Meccah, of sheathing his Charay[FN#13] in the chief offender’s heart.

At 8 A.M.} on the 14th July we left Al-Wijh, after passing a night, tolerably comfortable by contrast, in the coffee-house.  We took with us the stores necessary, for though our Rais had promised to anchor under Jabal Hassani that evening, no one believed him.  We sailed among ledges of rock, golden sands, green weeds, and in some places through yellow lines of what appeared to me at a distance foam after a storm.  All day a sailor sat upon the masthead, looking at the water, which was transparent as blue glass, and shouting out the direction.  This precaution was somewhat stultified by the roar of voices, which never

[p.218] failed to mingle with the warning, but we wore every half hour, and we did not run aground.  About midday we passed by Shaykh Hasan al-Marabit’s tomb.  It is the usual domed and whitewashed building, surrounded by the hovels of its guardians, standing upon a low flat island of yellow rock, vividly reminding me of certain scenes in Sind.  Its dreary position attracts to it the attention of passing travellers; the dead saint has a prayer and a Fatihah for the good of his soul, and the live sinner wends his way with religious refreshment.

Near sunset the wind came on to blow freshly, and we cast anchor together with the Persian pilgrims upon a rock.  This was one of the celebrated coral reefs of the Red Sea, and the sight justified Forskal’s emphatic description-luxus lususque naturae.  It was a huge ledge or platform rising but little above the level of the deep; the water-side was perpendicular as the wall of a fort; and, whilst a frigate might have floated within a yard of it, every ripple dashed over the reef, replenishing the little basins and hollows in the surface.  The colour of the waves near it was a vivid amethyst.  In the distance the eye rested upon what appeared to be meadows of brilliant flowers resembling those of earth, only far brighter and more lovely.  Nor was this Land of the Sea wholly desolate.  Gulls and terns here swam the tide; there, seated upon the coral, devoured their prey.  In the air, troops of birds contended noisily for a dead flying fish,[FN#14] and in the deep water they chased a shoal, which, in fright and hurry to escape the pursuers, veiled the surface with