ste of savages than of the 'polite circles.'

The old lady of the Maohn proposed to come to me, but I would not let her
leave her home, which would be quite an adventure to her. I knew she
would be exclamatory, and lament over me, and say every minute, 'Oh my
liver. Oh my eyes! The name of God be upon thee, and never mind!
to-morrow please God, thou wilt be quite well,' and so forth. People
send me such odd dishes, some very good. Yussuf's wife packed two
calves' feet tight in a little black earthern pan, with a seasoning of
herbs, and baked it in the bread oven, and the result was excellent.
Also she made me a sort of small macaroni, extremely good. Now too we
can get milk again, and Omar makes _kishta_, alias clotted cream.

Do send me a good edition of the 'Arabian Nights' in Arabic, and I should
much like to give Yussuf Lane's Arabic dictionary. He is very anxious to
have it. I can't read the 'Arabian Nights,' but it is a favourite
amusement to make one of the party read aloud; a stray copy of 'Kamar
ez-Zeman and Sitt Boodoora' went all round Luxor, and was much coveted
for the village _soirees_. But its owner departed, and left us to mourn
over the loss of his MSS.

I must tell you a black standard of respectability (it is quite equal to
the English one of the gig, or the ham for breakfast). I was taking
counsel with my friend Rachmeh, a negro, about Mabrook, and he urged me
to buy him of Palgrave, because he saw that the lad really loved me.
'Moreover,' he said, 'the boy is of a respectable family, for he told me
his mother wore a cow's tail down to her heels (that and a girdle to
which the tail is fastened, and a tiny leathern apron in front,
constituted her whole wardrobe), and that she beat him well when he told
lies or stole his neighbours eggs.' Poor woman; I wish this abominable
slave trade had spared her and her boy. What folly it is to stop the
Circassian slave trade, if it is stopped, and to leave this. The
Circassians take their own children to market, as a way of providing for
them handsomely, and both boys and girls like being sold to the rich
Turks; but the blacks and Abyssinians fight hard for their own liberty
and that of their cubs. Mabrook swears that there were two Europeans in
the party which attacked his village and killed he knew not how many, and
carried him and others off. He was not stolen by Arabs, or by Barrabias,
like Hassan, but taken in war from his home by the seaside,