perative language to the "natives" in general; and the
very donkey-boys are becoming cognizant of the right of man to remain
unbastinadoed. Still the old leaven remains behind; here, as elsewhere
in "morning-land," you cannot hold your own without employing your
fists. The passport system, now dying out of Europe, has sprung up, or
rather revived, in Egypt with peculiar vigor. Its good effects claim for
it our respect; still we cannot but lament its inconvenience. _We_, I
mean real Easterns. As strangers--even those whose beards have whitened
in the land--know absolutely nothing of what unfortunate natives must
endure, I am tempted to subjoin a short sketch of my adventures in
search of a Tezkireh at Alexandria.

Through ignorance which might have cost me dear but for my friend
Larking's weight with the local authorities, I had neglected to provide
myself with a passport in England; and it was not without difficulty,
involving much unclean dressing and an unlimited expenditure of broken
English, that I obtained from the consul at Alexandria a certificate
declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by profession
a doctor, aged thirty, and not distinguished--at least so the frequent
blanks seemed to denote--by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose,
or cheek. For this I disbursed a dollar. And here let me record the
indignation with which I did it. That mighty Britain--the mistress of
the seas--the ruler of one-sixth of mankind--should charge five
shillings to pay for the shadow of her protecting wing! That I cannot
speak my modernized "civis sum Romanus" without putting my hand into my
pocket, in order that these officers of the Great Queen may not take too
ruinously from a revenue of fifty-six millions! Oh the meanness of our
magnificence! the littleness of our greatness!

My new passport would not carry me without the Zabit or Police
Magistrate's counter-signature, said the consul. Next day I went to the
Zabit, who referred me to the Muhafiz (Governor) of Alexandria, at whose
gate I had the honor of squatting at least three hours, till a more
compassionate clerk vouchsafed the information that the proper place to
apply to was the Diwan Kharijiyeh (the Foreign Office). Thus a second
day was utterly lost. On the morning of the third I started as directed
for the place, which crowns the Headland of Figs. It is a huge and
couthless shell of building in parallelogrammic form, containing all
kinds of publi