disappointed master for this accident; but several persons soon collected around him; and one of these bystanders observed a dog eat a part of the contents of one of the dishes, and, a moment after, fall down dead: he therefore instantly seized the hand of the servant and informed him of this circumstance, which proved that the man whom he had been beating was a welee. Every apology was made to the injured saint, with many prayers for his forgiveness: but he was so disgusted with his new office, that he implored God and the Kutb to release him from it; and, in answer to his solicitations, his supernatural powers were withdrawn, and he returned to his shop, more contented than before.—This story is received as true by the people of Cairo; and therefore I have inserted it: for, in treating of superstitions, we have more to do with opinions than with facts. I am not sure, indeed, that it is altogether false: the supposed saint might have employed persons to introduce the dead serpent and dog into the vessels which he broke. I am told that many a person has obtained the reputation of being a welee by artifices of the kind just mentioned. There have been many instances, in Egypt, of welees afflicting themselves by austerities similar to those which are often practised by devotees in India. At the present time there is living, in Cairo, a welee who has placed an iron collar round his neck, and chained himself to a wall of his chamber; and it is said that he has been in this state more than thirty years: but some persons assert that he has often been seen to cover himself over with a blanket, as if to sleep, and that the blanket has been removed immediately after, and nobody found beneath it! Stories of this kind are related and believed by persons who, in many respects, are endowed by good sense; and to laugh, or express discredit, on hearing them, would give great offence. I was lately told that a certain welee being beheaded, for a crime of which he was not guilty, his head spoke after it was cut off;[359] and, of another decapitated under similar circumstances, that his blood traced upon the ground, in Arabic characters, the following declaration of his innocence—“I am a welee of God; and have died a martyr.” It is a very remarkable trait in the character of the people of Egypt and other countries of the East, that Muslims, Christians, and Jews adopt each other’s superstitions, while they abhor the more rational doctrines of each other’s faiths. In sickness, the Muslim sometimes employs Christian and Jewish priests to pray for him: the Christians and Jews, in the same predicament, often called in Muslim saints for the like purpose. Many Christians are in the frequent habit of visiting certain Muslim saints here; kissing their hands; begging their prayers, counsels, or prophecies; and giving them money and other presents.