cates the direction of Mecca.
When informed that the Ingilis never prostrate themselves toward Mecca
and say "Allah-il-allah!" they evince the greatest astonishment; and then
the strange, unnatural impiousness of people who never address themselves
to Allah nor prostrate toward the Holy City, impresses their simple minds
with something akin to the feeling entertained among certain of ourselves
toward extra dare-devil characters, and they seem to take a deeper and
kindlier interest in me than ever. The disappointment at not seeing what
I look like at prayers is more than offset by the additional novelty
imparted to my person by the, to them, strange and sensational omission.

They seem greatly disappointed to learn that I am going away in the
morning; they have plenty of toke-me-morge, pillau, mast, and sheerah,
they say--plenty of everything; and they want me to stay with them
always. Revolving the matter over in my mind, I am forcibly struck with
the calm, reposeful state of Nukhab society; and what a brilliant field
of enterprise for an ambitious person the place would be. Turned
Mussulman, joined in wedlock to three or four sore-eyed village damsels;
worshipped as a sort of strange, superior being, hakim and eye-water
dispenser; consulted as a walking store-house of occult philosophy on all
occasions; endeavoring to educate the people up to habits of all-round
cleanliness; chiding the mothers for allowing the flies to swarm and
devour the poor little babies' eyes--all this, for toke-me-morge, pillau,
mast, and sheerah, twice or thrice a day! Involuntarily my eye roams over
the gladsome countenances of the eligible portion of my female auditors,
as though driven by this whimsical flight of fancy to the necessity of at
once making a choice. There is only one present with any pretence to
comeliness; and embarrassed, no doubt, by the extreme tenderness of the
stranger's glance, she shrinks from view behind an aged and ugly person
whom I take to be her mother.

Everybody stops to see what a Ferenghi looks like en deshabille, and when
I am snugly sandwiched between the quilts provided, they gather about me
and peer curiously down into my face.

An enterprising youth is on hand at daybreak making a fire; but it is
eight o'clock before I am able to get away; they seem to be mildly
scheming among themselves to keep me with them as long as possible.

The trail winds and twists about among the mountains, following in the
tra