erely as Christian, he certainly does so. Had any tidings of
confirmed success on the part of the rebels in India reached the
furthermost parts of the Turkish empire, no Christian life would have
been safe there. The horrid outrage perpetrated at Jaffa, and the
massacre at Jeddah, sufficiently show us what we might have expected.
In Syria no Christian is admitted within a mosque, for his foot and
touch are considered to carry pollution.

But in Egypt we have caused ourselves to be better respected: we
thrash the Arabs and pay them, and therefore they are very glad to
see us anywhere. And even the dervishes welcome us to their most
sacred rites, with excellent coffee, and a loan of rush-bottomed
chairs. Now, when it is remembered that a Mahomedan never uses a
chair, it must be confessed that this is very civil. Moreover, let it
be said to their immortal praise, that the dervishes of Cairo never
ask for backsheish. They are the only people in the country that do
not.

So Bertram and Wilkinson had their coffee with sundry other
travelling Britons who were there; and then each, with his chair
in his hand went into the dervishes' hall. This was a large, lofty,
round room, the roof of which was in the shape of a cupola; on one
side, that which pointed towards Mecca, and therefore nearly due
east, there was an empty throne, or tribune, in which the head of
the college, or dean of the chapter of dervishes, located himself
on his haunches. He was a handsome, powerful man, of about forty,
with a fine black beard, dressed in a flowing gown, and covered by
a flat-topped black cap.

By degrees, and slowly, in came the college of the dervishes, and
seated themselves as their dean was seated; but they sat on the floor
in a circle, which spread away from the tribune, getting larger and
larger in its dimensions as fresh dervishes came in. There was not
much attention to regularity in their arrival, for some appeared
barely in time for the closing scene.

The commencement was tame enough. Still seated, they shouted out a
short prayer to Allah a certain number of times. The number was said
to be ninety-nine. But they did not say the whole prayer at once,
though it consisted of only three words. They took the first word
ninety-nine times; and then the second; and then the third. The only
sound to be recognized was that of Allah; but the deep guttural tone
in which this was groaned out by all the voices together, made even
that anythi