s made of a
well-shrunk and very strong grey flannel, and excellent I found it for
travelling in these places, because though a Norfolk jacket, shirt,
and pair of trousers of it only weighed about four pounds, a great
consideration in a tropical country, where every extra ounce tells on
the wearer, it was warm, and offered a good resistance to the rays of
the sun, and best of all to chills, which are so apt to result from
sudden changes of temperature.

Never shall I forget the comfort of the "wash and brush-up," and of
those clean flannels. The only thing that was wanting to complete my joy
was a cake of soap, of which we had none.

Afterwards I discovered that the Amahagger, who do not reckon dirt among
their many disagreeable qualities, use a kind of burnt earth for washing
purposes, which, though unpleasant to the touch till one gets accustomed
to it, forms a very fair substitute for soap.

By the time that I was dressed, and had combed and trimmed my black
beard, the previous condition of which was certainly sufficiently
unkempt to give weight to Billali's appellation for me of "Baboon," I
began to feel most uncommonly hungry. Therefore I was by no means sorry
when, without the slightest preparatory sound or warning, the curtain
over the entrance to my cave was flung aside, and another mute, a
young girl this time, announced to me by signs that I could not
misunderstand--that is, by opening her mouth and pointing down it--that
there was something ready to eat. Accordingly I followed her into the
next chamber, which we had not yet entered, where I found Job, who had
also, to his great embarrassment, been conducted thither by a fair mute.
Job never got over the advances the former lady had made towards him,
and suspected every girl who came near to him of similar designs.

"These young parties have a way of looking at one, sir," he would say
apologetically, "which I don't call respectable."

This chamber was twice the size of the sleeping caves, and I saw at once
that it had originally served as a refectory, and also probably as an
embalming room for the Priests of the Dead; for I may as well say at
once that these hollowed-out caves were nothing more nor less than vast
catacombs, in which for tens of ages the mortal remains of the great
extinct race whose monuments surrounded us had been first preserved,
with an art and a completeness that has never since been equalled,
and then hidden away for all time. On eac