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took up the saddle-bags and delicately picked my way through couchant camels, tethered mules and horses in the courtyard to the khan itself, which was a kind of cloister. I was making my arrange- ments with the landlord, when Rashid returned, the picture of despair. He flung up both his hands, announcing failure, and then sank down upon the ground and moaned. The host, a burly man, inquired what ailed him. I told him, when he uttered just reflections upon cabmen and the vanity of worldly wealth. Rashid, as I could see, was ‘zi'lan ’—a prey to that strange mixture of mad rage and sorrow and despair, which is a real disease for children of the Arabs. An English servant would not thus have cared about the loss of a small item of his master’s property, not by his fault but through that master’s oversight. But my pos- sessions were Rashid’s delight, his claim to honour. He boasted of them to all comers. In particular did he revere my gun, my Service revolver, and this whip—a tough thong of rhinoceros hide, rather nicely mounted with silver, which had been pre- sented to me by an aged Arab in return for some imagined favour. I had found it useful against