In order, Eastern flowers large."]

I was surprised that he seemed to take great delight in my sketching,
and several times, when I was making notes of some quaint latticed
windows overhanging the narrow road, so that they nearly met, he became
quite excited, chuckling and laughing to himself, as if in the enjoyment
of some tremendous joke.

I discovered afterwards that Brown's native servant had been pulling the
leg of our worthy slave, by telling him that these nightly expeditions
were for the purpose of carrying off some ravishingly beautiful lady
from one of the harems. No doubt he thought my sketching merely a blind.
Measurements with a pencil were obviously part of some incantation.

While on the subject of sketching, especially quick note-taking under
difficult conditions, I want a word with my fellow-craftsmen should they
chance to take up this book. The difficulties of drawing by twilight,
lamplight, and the still greater difficulty of drawing in colour under
blazing sunlight, cannot easily be exaggerated. How many times has a
sketch done in a failing light looked strong in tone, only to go to
pieces when seen under normal conditions? How often the sunlight on your
paper flatters your colours, so that you think you are improvising in a
most joyous way, and when you get home you find nothing but dinginess
and mud!

[Illustration: "By Baghdad's shrines of fretted gold,
High-walled gardens, green and old."]

Probably you have thought it out and found some solution as I did, but
in case these difficulties are still formidable I will tell you of _one_
way to reduce them to impotence. I take with me, on all occasions where
there is to be great uncertainty of light, some coloured chalks. About
six colours, picked to suit the kind of work attacked; either chalk
pencils or hard pastilles will give you certain colour values in
whatever light you find yourself, and even if you can hardly see what
you are drawing these _must_, to some extent, standardize your values,
so that your rough work can be washed over and brought up to any pitch
of detail subsequently, without danger of the main tones of your sketch
being wrong. The speed with which a sketch can be carried forward in
this way, and the "quality" obtained by the rapid fusion of the chalk
with the colour wash, are both pleasant surprises when experimenting in
this medium.

Night after night we sallied forth and roamed about the narrow