Chamber (God save the mark!) are going down with their hearts in their shoes.

The big people are angry with the Indian saint, because he treated them like dirt everywhere. One great man went to see him, and asked him to sell him a Memlook, a pretty boy. The Indian, who had not spoken or saluted, burst forth, "Be silent, thou wicked one! Dost thou dare to ask me for a soul, to take it with thee to hell?" Fancy the surprise of the "distinguished" Turk. Never had he heard such language. The story has travelled all up the river, and is of course much enjoyed.

Last night Sheykh Yussuf gave an entertainment, killed a sheep, and had a reading of the Siret er Russool; it was the night of the Prophet's great vision, and is a great night in Islam. I was sorry not to be well enough to go. Now that there is a Cadi here, Sheykh Yussuf has much business to settle; and he came to me and said, "Expound to me the laws of marriage and inheritance of the Christian, that I may do no wrong in the affairs of the Copts, for they won't go and be settled by the priest out of the Gospels; and I can't find any laws, except about marriage, in the Gospels." I set him up with the text of the tribute-money, and told him to judge according to his own laws, for that Christians had no laws other than that of the country they lived in. Poor Yussuf was sore perplexed about a divorce case. I refused to expound," and told him all the learned in the law in England had not yet settled which text to follow.

66

Do you remember the German story of the lad who travelled "um das gruseln zu lernen" (to learn how to tremble)? Well, I, who never gruselte (quaked) before, had a touch of it a few mornings ago. I was sitting here quietly drinking tea, and four or five men were present, when a cat came to the door. I called "bis! bis!" and offered milk; but puss, after looking at us, ran away. "Well dost thou, Lady," said a

66

quiet sensible man, a merchant here, "to be kind to the cat, for I dare say he gets little enough at home: his father, poor man, cannot cook for his children every day;" and then, in an explanatory tone to the company: "That is Alee Nasseeree's boy Yussuf; it must be Yussuf, because his fellow twin Ismaeen is with his uncle at Negadeh." “Mir gruselte” (I shuddered), I confess not but what I have heard things almost as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe, but an extravagance" in a kufian has quite a different effect from one in a tail-coat. meat -a cat?" I gasped. "To be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see. All twins go out as cats at night, if they go to sleep hungry; and their own bodies lie at home like dead meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die. When they grow up to ten or twelve, they leave it off: why, your own boy Achmet does it." Ho, Achmet! Achmet appears. "Boy, don't you go out as a cat at night?" No," said Achmet tranquilly, "I am not a twin. My sister's sons do." I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats. No, there is no fear; they only eat a little of the cookery; but if you beat them, they tell their parents next day. So-and-So beat me in his house last night,' and show their bruises. No, they are not afreets; they are beni Adam. Only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion broth and some milk the first thing when they are born, they don't do it at all." Omar professed never to have heard it; but I am sure he had; only he dreads being laughed at. One of the American missionaries told me something like it, as belonging to the Copts; but it is entirely Egyptian, and common to both religions. I asked several Copts, who assured me it was true, and told it just the same. Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration? However, the notion fully accounts for the horror the people feel at the idea of killing a cat.

A poor pilgrim from the far black country was taken ill yesterday at a village six miles hence; he could speak a few words of Arabic only, and begged to be carried to the Ababdeh. So the Sheykh el Beled put him on a donkey, and sent him and his little boy, and laid him in Sheykh Hassan's house. He called for Hassan, and begged him to take care of the child, and to send him to an uncle somewhere in Cairo. Hassan said, "Oh, you will get well, &c. and take the boy with you." "I cannot take

him into the grave," said the black pilgrim.

Well, in the night he died, and the boy went to Hassan's mat, and said, "Oh, Hassan! my father is dead." So the two Sheykhs and several men got up, and went and sat with the boy till dawn, because he refused to lie down, or to leave his father's corpse. At daybreak he said, "Take me now and sell me, and buy new cloth to dress my father for the tomb." All the Ababdeh cried when they heard it, and Hassan went and bought the cloth, and sweet-stuff for the boy who, remains with him.

Such is death on the road in Egypt. I tell it as Hassan's slave told it me; and, somehow, we all cried again at the poor little boy rising from his dead father's side to say, "Come now, sell me to dress my father for the tomb." These strange black pilgrims always interest me. Many take four years to Mecca and home, and have children born to them on the road, and learn a few words of Arabic.

I must leave off, for Mahboobeh has come to rub me after the fashion of her country, with her soft brown hands and with oils, to take the pains out of my bones. Kiss my R for me. What would I give to see her face!

I meant to have sent you a long letter by the Consul General's steamer; but ever since he went up to Assouan I have been in my bed. The weather set in colder than I ever felt it here... An Egyptian doctor who has studied in Paris wants me to spend the summer up here, and take sand-baths, i.e. bury myself up to the chin in the hot sand, and to get a Dongola girl to rub me. A most fascinating Derweesh from Esneh gave me the same advice. He wanted me to go and live near him at Esneh, and let him treat me.

I wish you could see a friend of mine: he is a sort of remnant of the Memlook Bey's a Circassian who has inherited his master's property, and married his master's daughter. The master was one of the Beys; also a slave, inheriting from his master. After being a terrible shaitan (devil) after drink, women, &c. my friend has repented, and become a man of pilgrimage and prayer and perpetual fasting; but he has retained the exquisite grace and charm of manner which must have made him irresistible in his shaitan days, and also the beautifully-delicate style of dress: a dove-coloured cloth gibbeh over a pale blue silk kuftan, a turban like a snow-drift, under which flowed the! silky fair hair and beard, and the dainty

white hands under the long muslin shirtsleeve, made a picture; and such a smile, and such ready, graceful talk! He was brought to me as a sort of doctor, and also to try to convert me on one point.

Some Christian had made some of my friends quite miserable by telling them of the doctrine that all unbaptized infants went to eternal fire; and, as they knew that I had lost a child very young, it weighed on their minds that perhaps I fretted about this, and so they could not refrain from trying to convince me that God was not so cruel and unjust as the Nazarene priests represented him and that all infants whatsoever, as well as all ignorant persons, were to be saved. Would that I could take the cruel error out of the minds of all the hundreds of thousands of poor Christian mothers who must be tortured by it," said he, "and let them understand that their dead babies are with Him who sent and took them." I own I did not resent this interference with my orthodoxy, especially as it is the only one I ever knew my friends attempt.

Another doctor came up in the passengerboat, a Shereef, and eminently a gentleman. He called on me, and spent all his spare time with me. I liked him better than the bewitching Derweesh, he is so like my old love, Don Quixote. He was amazed and delighted at what he heard here about me.

6.

Ah, Madame, on vous aime comme une sœur, et on vous respecte comme une reine; cela rejouit le cœur des honnêtes gens de voir tous les préjugés oubliés et détruits à ce point." We had no end of talk about things in general. My friend is the only Arab who has read a good deal of European literature and history. He said, "Vous seule, dans toute l'Égypte, connaissez le peuple, et comprenez ce qui se passe; tous les autres Européens ne savent absolument rien que les dehors; il n'y a que vous qui ayez inspiré la confiance qu'il faut pour connaitre la vérité." I don't repeat this as a boast, but it is a proof of the kind thoughts people have of me, simply because I am decently civil to them.

In Egypt we are eaten up with taxes; there is not a penny left to any one. I saw one of the poor dancing-girls the other day; each woman is made to pay according to her presumed gains i.e. her good looks. It is left to the discretion of the official who farms the taxes, and thus these poor girls are exposed to all the caprices and extortions of the police.

Such a queer fellow came here the other day, a stalwart Holsteiner - I should think,

a man of fifty who had been for years up about in the Soudan and Sennaar, and, being penniless, had walked all through Nubia, begging his way. He was not the least "down upon his luck," and spoke with enthusiasm of the hospitality of Sir Samuel Baker's "tigers," - Ja das sind die rechten Kerls!' das ist das glückliche Leben!" ("These, indeed, are the right sort of "fellows! that is a glorious life!") His account is, that if you go with an armed party, the blacks naturally show fight, as men with guns, in their eyes, are always slave-hunters; but if you go alone and poor, they kill an ox for you, unless you prefer a sheep, give you a hut, and generally any thing they have to offer, "merissey" (beer) to make you as drunk as a lord, and young ladies to pour it out for you, and you need not wear any clothes. If you had heard him, you would have started for the interior at once. I gave him a dinner and a bottle of common wine, which he emptied, and a few shillings, and away he trudged merrily towards Cairo. I wonder what the Nubians thought of a hawagah (gentleman) begging! He said they were very kind, and that he often ate what he was sure they pinched themselves to give-dourrah-bread and dates.

In the evening we were talking of this man's stories, and of "anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow to a prodigious height, by means of an edifice woven of their own hair and other queer things, when Hassan told a story which pleased me particularly.

My father," said he, "Sheykh Mohammed (who was a taller and handsomer man than I am) was once travelling very far up in the black country, and he and the men he was with had very little to eat, and had killed nothing for many days. Presently they heard a sort of wailing out of a hole in the rock, and some of the men went in and dragged out a creature-I know not, and my father knew not, whether a child of Adam, or a beast. But it was like a very foul-faced and ill-shaped woman, and had six toes on its feet. The men wanted to slay it, according to the law, declaring it to be a beast, and lawful food; but when it saw the knife, it cried sadly, and covered its face with its hands in terror; and my father said, By the most high God, ye shall not kill the poor woman-beast, which thus begs its life. I tell you it is unlawful to eat one so like the children of Adam.' And the beast or woman clung to him, and hid under his cloak, and my father carried her for some time behind him on his horse, until

6

they saw some creatures like her, and then he sent her to them; but he had to drive her from him by force, for she clung to him. Thinkest thou, lady, it was really a beast, or some sort of children of Adam?"

66

"God knows, and He only," said I piously; but, by His indulgent name, thy father, O Sheykh, was a true "nobleman." Sheykh Yussuf chimed in, and gave a decided opinion that a creature able to understand the sight of the knife, and to act so, was not lawful to kill for food. You see what a real Arab Don Quixote was: it is a picture worthy of him; the tall, noblelooking Ababdeh sheltering the poor "woman-beast"-most likely a gorilla or chimpanzee — and carrying her en eroupe.

From the Saturday Review.

BLIND PEOPLE: THEIR WORKS AND WAYS.*

*Blind People: their Works and Ways. By the Rev. B. G. Johns. London: Murray. 1867.

In a small volume of not quite two hundred pages, Mr. Johns has put together a good deal of curious information about the blind. The fault of the book is a want of definiteness. Anecdotes drawn from all kinds of sources are too much mixed up with facts which the author has himself observed. The biographies in particular are extremely fragmentary, amounting to little more than a statement of what the subjects of them were able to do, without any explanation of the process by which they arrived at their proficiency. In short, Blind People: their Works and Ways, is neither a scientific discussion on the action of blindness on the uninjured senses, nor a manual of the intellectual discipline to which the blind are capable of being subjected, nor a collection of authenticated facts which may serve as data for future inquirers; it partakes a little of the nature of all three. The book has suffered from a pardonable desire on the part of the writer to make it interesting. A really accurate and detailed life of a blind man would be extremely valuable as a basis for a system of treatment. Unfortunately, however, no materials seem to exist for such a work in any remarkable instance. Even "in the life of such a man as Saunderson," says Mr. Johns, "we read that he soon learned all that school could teach him; that he then set to work at home

almost single-handed, and yet in a few months went up to Cambridge with the fame of a great mathematician. But of the manner in which he achieved this wondrous success, and of the way in which he laid up his stores of learning, we know nothing." Of course, where the means at his disposal are so scanty, an author cannot be blamed for making but little of them. But Mr. Johns has had opportunities of another kind, which, if properly used, would have enabled him to supply much that is wanting in previous works on the subject. He has been labouring among the blind, he tells us, for the last seventeen years, and his position as Chaplain of the well-known Blind School in St. George's Fields must have made him acquainted with a large number of facts relating to the training of blind children. A judicious selection from these would have been better worth reading than any number of "sketches of the lives of famous blind men," of whom, as Mr. Johns confesses, hardly any thing is known with that minuteness which is necessary to make the knowledge useful.

The geographical statistics of blindness are extremely puzzling. In Norway one person in every 540 is blind; in Sweden only one in 1,419. France has one in 938; Belgium one in 1,233. Across the Atlantic, the United States have only one in 2,470, by far the smallest proportion of any country on record; but this exemption does not extend to the British Colonies, for Newfoundland has one in 1,426. In England and Wales the variations are equally conspicuous. In Cheshire and Lancashire the proportion is one in 1,253; in Bedfordshire still less, one in 1,325. In the Eastern counties it is one in 902; in Wilts, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, one in 763; in Herefordshire, one in 693. We know of no theory on which these figures can be explained, though the comparative immunity of the great manufacturing counties and of Bedfordshire, where straw-plaiting largely prevails, seems to point to indoor occupations as less injurious to the sight than outdoor - -a conclusion which would hardly have been arrived à priori. Of the 20.000 blind people in England, about 2,700 are said to be under twenty years of age. A great proportion of this number belong to a class which cannot afford to give its children the peculiar education they require; but, strange to say, the free blind schools are not full. The twelve chief schools in England have room for a little over 900 scholars, but at the census of 1861, only 760 were actually receiving instruction in them. Of the adult blind a

considerable number are engaged in ordi nary work as labourers, miners, blacksmiths' shoemakers, tailors, and other similar occupations, while a smaller proportion carry on those outlying trades - basket-making, matmaking, broom-making, and the likewhich seem especially appropriated to blind men. Of the women, about 200 are in domestic service, and Mr. Johns says that the experience of the schools has proved that blind girls can "do all a housemaid's work (when the geography of the house is once known), make the beds, lay the dinner and breakfast table, shake the carpets, and help at the washing tub." As far as "laying the the dinner and breakfast table" is concerned, we can easily believe in the efficiency of blind people. Ordinary servants so rarely use their eyes to any purpose, that a little delicacy of touch must be ample compensation for absence of sight. There are about one hundred blind dressmakers. Of the classes below these Mr. Johns mentions only a few individuals, all more or less (and some unpleasantly) known to Londoners. He tells us that the tall young man, "in rusty black clothes and kid gloves," who often " plants himself with his back firmly against the wall of the National Gallery," probably in fine weather makes four or five shillings a day. The blind street readers— those offensive personages who finger out St. Paul's Epistles for stray pence -seem to be less successful; at least one of them professes to make only two and sixpence a week by this means. Mr. Johns evidently suspects the genuineness of the accomplishment, as he remarks that a performer of this sort "reads on glibly enough in all weathers, rain, east wind, or snow, when the finger of an unprofessional blind boy would be utterly disabled." Of another street celebrity, "Blind Sarah," Mr. Johns says:

She had been upon the streets of London for adrift by the Workhouse at the age of twenty. forty years, having been born in 1786, and cast Her instrument was the hurdy-gurdy the 'Cymbal" she insisted on calling it, which it took her five months to learn. During her forty years of wandering she had had four guides, and had worn out three instruments. It took her about three weeks to learn a new tune on the hurdy-gurdy; and her complete stock rarely exceeded a dozen. Nothing she managed to extract from the "cymbals; could be more forlornly hideous than the noise vet she contrived to rouse the pity of passers-by by her destitute appearance, if not by the beauty of her music, of which she loved to say, "King David used to play on one of these here instruments, which it isn't hard to play; the only thing