r to all Gipsies. Captain Newbold, in fact,
assumes that any person "who remains in Egypt longer than the ordinary
run of travellers, and roams about the streets and environs of the large
towns, can hardly fail to notice the strange appearance of certain
females, whose features at once distinguish them from the ordinary Fellah
Arabs and Cophts of the country."

"The Nuris or Nawers are hereditary thieves, but are now (1856) employed
as police and watchmen in the Pacha's country estates. In Egypt they
intermarry with the Fellahin or Arabs of the soil, from whom, in physical
appearance and dress, they can hardly be distinguished. Outwardly they
profess Mohammedanism, and have little intercourse with the Helebis and
Ghagars (or Rhagarin)."

Each of these tribes or classes speak a separate and distinct dialect or
jargon. That of the Rhagarin most resembles the language spoken by the
Kurbats, or Gipsies of Syria. "It seems to me probable," says Captain
Newbold, "that the whole of these tribes had one common origin in India,
or the adjacent countries on its Western frontier, and that the
difference in the jargons they now speak is owing to their sojourn in the
various countries through which they have passed. _This is certain_,
_that the Gipsies are strangers in the land of Egypt_."

I am not astonished, on examining the specimens of these three dialects
given by Captain Newbold, with the important addition made by Mr W.
Burckhardt Barker, that I could not converse with the Rhagarin. That of
the Nawers does not contain a single word which would be recognised as
Rommany, while those which occur in the other two jargons are, if not
positively either few and far between, strangely distorted from the
original. A great number are ordinary vulgar Arabic. It is very curious
that while in England such a remarkably large proportion of Hindustani
words have been preserved, they have been lost in the East, in countries
comparatively near the fatherland--India.

I would, in conclusion to this work, remark that numbers of Rommany
words, which are set down by philologists as belonging to Greek,
Slavonian, and other languages, were originally Hindu, and have only
changed their form a little because the wanderers found a resemblance to
the old word in a new one. I am also satisfied that much may be learned
as to the origin of these words from a familiar acquaintance with the
vulgar dialects of Persia, and such words as are not p