the stations at which your boat stops, Arabians, Nubians, and
Egyptians sit squatting on the caked mud with their gaudy clothes,
brilliant embroideries, and rugs piled around them all within arm's
reach. Here also you must bring the guile which I have described into
play.

It may be that at Assuan, near the first cataract, I really got into
some little danger. I never knew why, but in the bazaars there I
developed an awful, insatiable desire to make a complete collection of
Abyssinian weapons of warfare. For this purpose, one day, I got on my
donkey and took with me only a little Scotchman, who had presented me
with countless bead necklaces and so many baskets all the way up the
Nile that at night I was obliged to put them overboard in order to get
into my stateroom, and who wore, besides his goggles, a green veil over
his face. We made our way across the sand, into which our donkeys' feet
sank above their fetlocks, to the bazaars of Assuan.

These bazaars deserve more than a passing mention, as they are unlike
any that I ever saw. They are all under one roof on both sides of tiny
streets or broad aisles, just as you choose to call them, and through
these aisles your donkey is privileged to go, while you sit calmly on
his back, bargaining with the cross-legged merchants, who scream at you
as you pass, thrusting their wares into your face, and, even if you
attempt to pass on, they stop your donkey by pulling his tail. On this
particular day I left my donkey at the door and made my way on foot, as
I was eager to make my purchases.

Perhaps I was careless and ought to have taken better care of my
Scotchman, because he was so little and so far from home, but I regret
to say that I lost him soon after I went into the bazaar, and I didn't
see him again for three hours. Never shall I forget those three hours.

In Smyrna, Turkey, and Egypt the bargaining language is about the same.

"What you give, lady?"

"I won't give anything! I don't want it! What! Do you think I would
carry that back home?"

"But you take hold of him; you feel him silk; I think you want to buy.
Ver' cheap, only four pound!"

"Four pounds!" I say in French. "Oh, you don't want to sell. You want to
keep it. And at such a price you will keep it."

"Keep it!" in a shrill scream. "Not want to sell? Me? I _here_ to sell!
I sell you everything you see! I sell you the _shop_!" and then more
wheedlingly, "You give me forty francs?"

"No," in English aga