[p.127]letter of credit-as a raven may sometimes be seen peering, with head askance, into the interior of a suspected marrow-bone.  “Can this be a bona-fide draft?” they mentally inquired.  And finally they offered, politely, to write to England for me, to draw the money, and to forward it in a sealed bag directed “Al-Madinah.”  I need scarcely say that such a style of transmission would, in the case of precious metals, have left no possible chance of its safe arrival.  When the difficulty was overcome, I bought fifty pounds’ worth of German dollars (Maria Theresas), and invested the rest in English and Turkish sovereigns.[FN#17] The gold I myself carried; part of the silver I sewed up in Shaykh Nur’s leather waistbelt, and part was packed in the boxes, for this reason,-when Badawin begin plundering a respectable man, if they find a certain amount of ready money in his baggage, they do not search his person.  If they find none they proceed to a bodily inspection, and if his waist-belt be empty they are rather disposed to rip open his stomach, in the belief that he must have some peculiarly ingenious way of secreting valuables.  Having passed through this trouble I immediately fell into another.  My hardly-earned Alexandrian passport required a double visa, one at the Police office, the other at the Consul’s.  After returning to Egypt, I found it was the practice of travellers

[p.128]who required any civility from Dr. Walne, then the English official at Cairo, to enter the “Presence” furnished with an order from the Foreign Office.

I had neglected the precaution, and had ample reason to regret having done so.  Failing at the British Consulate, and unwilling to leave Cairo without being “en regle,"-the Egyptians warned me that Suez was a place of obstacles to pilgrims,[FN#18]-I was obliged to look elsewhere for protection.  My friend Haji Wali was the first consulted; after a long discussion he offered to take me to his Consul, the Persian, and to find out for what sum I could become a temporary subject of the Shah.  We went to the sign of the “Lion and the Sun,” and we found the dragoman,[FN#19] a subtle Syrian Christian, who,

[p.129]after a rigid inquiry into the state of my purse (my country was no consideration at all[FN#20]), introduced me to the Great Man.  I have described this personage once already, and he merits not a second notice.  The interview was truly ludicrous.  He treated us with exceeding hauteur, motioned me to sit almost out of hearing, and after rolling his head in profound silence for nearly a quarter of an hour, vouchsafed the information that though my father might be a Shirazi, and my mother an Afghan, he had not the honour of my acquaintance.  His companion, a large old Persian with Polyphemean eyebrows and a mulberry beard, put some gruff and discouraging questions.  I quoted the verses

“He is a man who benefits his fellow men,
Not he who says ‘why?’ and ‘wherefore?’ and ‘how much?’”