accompanied by music, may
readily be mistaken for dancing acquired from a teacher. The Hindu
_sappa-wallahs_ make people believe that this "dancing" is really the
result of tuition, and that it is influenced by music. Later, I found
that the common people in Egypt continue to believe that the snakes which
Abdullah and his tribe exhibit are as dangerous and deadly as can be, and
that they are managed by magic. Whether they believe, as it was held of
old by the Rabbis, that serpents are to be tamed by sorcery only on the
Sabbath, I never learned.

Abdullah was crafty enough for a whole generation of snakes, but in the
wisdom attributed to serpents he was woefully wanting. He would run by
my side in the street as I rode, expecting that I would pause to accept a
large wiggling scorpion as a gift, or purchase a viper, I suppose for a
riding-whip or a necktie. One day when I was in a jam of about a hundred
donkey-boys, trying to outride the roaring mob, and all of a fever with
heat and dust, Abdullah spied me, and, joining the mob, kept running by
my side, crying in maddening monotony, "Snake, sah! Scorpion, sah! Very
fine snake to-day, sah!"--just as if his serpents were edible delicacies,
which were for that day particularly fresh and nice.

There are three kinds of gypsies in Egypt,--the Rhagarin, the Helebis,
and the Nauar. They have secret jargons among themselves; but as I
ascertained subsequently from specimens given by Captain Newboldt {302a}
and Seetzen, as quoted by Pott, {302b} their language is made up of
Arabic "back-slang," Turkish and Greek, with a very little Romany,--so
little that it is not wonderful that I could not converse with them in
it. The Syrian gypsies, or Nuri, who are seen with bears and monkeys in
Cairo, are strangers in the land. With them a conversation is not
difficult. It is remarkable that while English, German, and Turkish or
Syrian gypsy look so different and difficult as printed in books, it is
on the whole an easy matter to get on with them in conversation. The
roots being the same, a little management soon supplies the rest.

Abdullah was a Helebi. The last time I saw him I was sitting on the
balcony of Shepherd's Hotel, in the early evening, with an American, who
had never seen a snake-charmer. I called the boy, and inadvertently gave
him his pay in advance, telling him to show all his stock in trade. But
the temptation to swindle was too great, and seizing the coin he