nny and
oppression! what a capital thing some high-minded and independent
patriot would make of it! how he would call a meeting to defend the
rights of the subject! and how he would get his admirers to vote him a
piece of plate for his noble and glorious exertions! Here nobody minded
the thing; they took no heed of the indignity; and I verily believe my
friend and I, who were safe up at the window, were the only persons in
the place who felt any annoyance.

The prodigious multitude of donkeys formed another strange feature in
the scene. There were hundreds of them, carrying all sorts of things in
panniers; and some of the smallest were ridden by men so tall that they
were obliged to hold up their legs that their feet might not touch the
ground. Donkeys, in short, are the carts of Egypt and the
hackney-coaches of Alexandria.

[Illustration: BEDOUIN ARAB.]

In addition to the donkeys long strings of ungainly-looking camels were
continually passing, generally preceded by a donkey, and accompanied by
swarthy men clad in a short shirt with a red and yellow handkerchief
tied in a peculiar way over their heads, and wearing sandals; these
savage-looking people were Bedouins, or Arabs of the desert. A very
truculent set they seemed to be, and all of them were armed with a long
crooked knife and a pistol or two, stuck in a red leathern girdle. They
were thin, gaunt, and dirty, and strode along looking fierce and
independent. There was something very striking in the appearance of
these untamed Arabs: I had never pictured to myself that anything so
like a wild beast could exist in human form. The motions of their
half-naked bodies were singularly free and light, and they looked as if
they could climb, and run, and leap over anything. The appearance of
many of the older Arabs, with their long white beard and their ample
cloak of camel's hair, called an abba, is majestic and venerable. It was
the first time that I had seen these "Children of the Desert," and the
quickness of their eyes, their apparent freedom from all restraint, and
their disregard of any conventional manners, struck me forcibly. An
English gentleman in a round hat and a tight neck-handkerchief and
boots, with white gloves and a little cane in his hand, was a style of
man so utterly and entirely unlike a Bedouin Arab that I could hardly
conceive the possibility of their being only different species of the
same animal.

After we had dined, being tired with the he