none too cheery, I shall always remember how anxious Dr and Mrs Ahmed were to render pleasant my stay. A doctor of Glasgow University, Dr Ahmed made his name in Assam in the Indian medical service, and was only a short time ago appointed Vice-Consul at Hodaidah; and it is to be hoped that the skilful way in which he carries out his by no means easy duties there, and keeps firmly rooted in that town a feeling of respect between the British and Turkish Governments, will shortly obtain for him a post in some more healthy and important place. The _café_ in which I had taken up my quarters faced the sea on one side, and the only wide street in the town on the other, that which lies along the seaboard, from which it is only divided by the Government offices and huts of _areesh_ or reeds. From my window on the second storey I was able to watch the people passing and repassing, and many an hour was spent thus in idleness. But if this street offered scenes of character, how much more so did the bazaars! and there, when I was well enough, I used to sit talking to the Arab shopkeepers and sipping coffee. Good intelligent fellows many of them were, and always ready to waste half an hour in listening to tales of Egypt and Morocco, and even of my journey in the Yemen. What sights the bazaars offer! All the nationalities of the world seem to crowd there—strange weird people in every stage of clothing, from almost nakedness to rich robes of striped silks. Unlike the bazaars at Aden, those of Hodaidah are roofed in from the sun, the fierce rays of which yet find cracks and crannies in the wood and mats to creep through. But their brilliant light falling upon some stall of fruit perhaps only tends to throw into deeper shadow the rest of the crowded street. In the cool of the afternoon I would saunter round and take up my station on the little shop-platform of a seller of books, and spend an hour or two with him. A wizened little old man he was, a native of Zebeed; but he was good company, and would put aside all ideas of business when he saw me coming, and would point out the strange figures amongst the passers-by, and tell me whence they came and who they were. Jews, Indians of all kinds, Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, Bedouins, Abyssinians, Turks, Greeks, negroes, and a few Europeans, would jostle each other in the narrow ways.