Hospitality is a virtue for which the natives of the East in general are highly and deservedly admired; and the people of Egypt are well entitled to commendation on this account. A word which signifies literally “a person on a journey” (“musáfir”) is the term most commonly employed in this country in the sense of a visitor or guest. There are very few persons here who would think of sitting down to a meal, if there were a stranger in the house, without inviting him to partake of it, unless the latter were a menial; in which case, he would be invited to eat with the servants. It would be considered a shameful violation of good manners if a Muslim abstained from ordering the table to be prepared at the usual time because a visitor happened to be present. Persons of the middle classes in this country, if living in a retired situation, sometimes take their supper before the door of their house, and invite every passenger of respectable appearance to eat with them. This is very commonly done among the lower orders. In cities and large towns, claims on hospitality are unfrequent; as there are many wekálehs, or khans, where strangers may obtain lodging; and food is very easily procured: but in the villages, travellers are often lodged and entertained by the Sheykh or some other inhabitant; and if the guest be a person of the middle or higher classes, or even not very poor, he gives a present to his host’s servants, or to the host himself. In the desert, however, a present is seldom received from a guest. By a Sunneh law, a traveller may claim entertainment, of any person able to afford it to him, for three days.—The account of Abraham’s entertaining the three angels, related in the Bible, presents a perfect picture of the manner in which a modern Bedawee sheykh receives travellers arriving at his encampment. He immediately orders his wife or women to make bread; slaughters a sheep or some other animal, and dresses it in haste; and bringing milk and any other provisions that he may have ready at hand, with the bread, and the meat which he has dressed, sets them before his guests. If these be persons of high rank, he stands by them while they eat; as Abraham did in the case above alluded to. Most Bedawees will suffer almost any injury to themselves or their families rather than allow their guests to be ill-treated while under their protection. There are Arabs who even regard the chastity of their wives as not too precious to be sacrificed for the gratification of their guests;[417] and at an encampment of the Bisháreen, I ascertained that there are many persons in this great tribe (which inhabits a large portion of the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea) who offer their unmarried daughters to their guests, merely from motives of hospitality, and not for hire.