incident which I saw at a certain village on the Nile, which I will not
name. Suffice it to say that the story in the main was true. Also the
chief incident of the story, called 'The Price of the Grindstone--and
the Drum', is true. The Mahommed Seti of that story was the servant of
a friend of mine, and he did in life what I made him do in the tale. 'On
the Reef of Norman's Woe', which more than one journal singled out as
showing what extraordinary work was being done in Egypt by a handful of
British officials, had its origin in something told me by my friend Sir
John Rogers, who at one time was at the head of the Sanitary Department
of the Government of Egypt.

I could take the stories one by one, and show the seeds from which this
little plantation of fiction sprang, but I will not go further than to
refer to a story called 'Fielding Had an Orderly', the idea of which was
contained in the experience of a British official whose courage was
as cool as his wit, and both were extremely dangerous weapons, used at
times against those who were opposed to him. When I read a book like
'Said the Fisherman', however, with its wonderfully intimate knowledge
of Oriental life and the thousand nuances which only the born
Orientalist can give, I look with tempered pride upon Donovan Pasha.
Still I think that it caught and held some phases of Egyptian life
which the author of 'Said the Fisherman' might perhaps miss, since the
observation of every artist has its own idiosyncrasy, and what strikes
one observer will not strike another.

A FOREWORD

It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life
in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia
and the Islands of the Southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed
in the middle and late Eighties. They appeared in various English
magazines, and were written in London far from the scenes which
suggested them. None of them were written on the spot, as it were. I did
not think then, and I do not think now, that this was perilous to their
truthfulness. After many years of travel and home-staying observation
I have found that all worth remembrance, the salient things and scenes,
emerge clearly out of myriad impressions, and become permanent in mind
and memory. Things so emerging are typical at least, and probably true.

Those tales of the Far South were given out with some prodigality. They
did not appear in book form, however; for, at the