ted by the American
Bible Society in New York. I tried vainly in Cairo and Alexandria to find
a missionary who would supply my heathenish destitution of the Sacred
Writings; for I had reached the East through Austria, where they are
prohibited, and to travel through Palestine without them, would be like
sailing without pilot or compass. It gives a most impressive reality to
Solomon's "house of the forest of Lebanon," when you can look up from the
page to those very forests and those grand mountains, "excellent with the
cedars." Seeing the holy man of Timbuctoo praying with his face towards
Mecca, I went down to him, and we conversed for a long time on religious
matters. He is tolerably well informed, having read the Books of Moses and
the Psalms of David, but, like all Mahommedans, his ideas of religion
consist mainly of forms, and its reward is a sensual paradise. The more
intelligent of the Moslems give a spiritual interpretation to the nature
of the Heaven promised by the Prophet, and I have heard several openly
confess their disbelief in the seventy houries and the palaces of pearl
and emerald. Shekh Mahommed Senoosee scarcely ever utters a sentence in
which is not the word "Allah," and "La illah il' Allah" is repeated at
least every five minutes. Those of his class consider that there is a
peculiar merit in the repetition of the names and attributes of God. They
utterly reject the doctrine of the Trinity, which they believe implies a
sort of partnership, or God-firm (to use their own words), and declare
that all who accept it are hopelessly damned. To deny Mahomet's
prophetship would excite a violent antagonism, and I content myself with
making them acknowledge that God is greater than all Prophets or Apostles,
and that there is but one God for all the human race. I have never yet
encountered that bitter spirit of bigotry which is so frequently ascribed
to them; but on the contrary, fully as great a tolerance as they would
find exhibited towards them by most of the Christian sects.

This morning a paper was sent to us, on which we were requested to write
our names, ages, professions, and places of nativity. We conjectured that
we were subjected to the suspicion of political as well as physical taint,
but happily this was not the case. I registered myself as a _voyageur_,
the French as _negocians_ and when it came to the woman's turn, Absalom,
who is a partisan of female progress, wished to give her the same
professi