"He received us with a hospitality that seemed natural; his words were more sonorous, grand, and flowing than those of any Arab I had before seen. They reminded me of the pleasure I had felt in South America in listening to the language of a true Spaniard, heard amidst the harsh gutturals of a provincial jargon; strings of highflown compliments, uttered with an open, noble mien, that, while it must please those to whom it is used, seems but a worthy condescension in him. 'He was a man of war and woes; Yet on his lineaments ye cannot trace, While gentleness her milder radiance throws Along that aged venerable face, The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.' "If report speaks true, never did there breathe a truer son of Hagar than Sheik Dahhal. During his whole life his hand has been against every man, and every man's against him. Gaining his social position with his dagger, he openly endeavoured to enlarge it by every exercise of force or fraud. The whole frontier of Mardin, Nisibis, Mosul, Bagdad, &c., are his deadly enemies, made so by his acts. It must be sad in declining years to see the wreck of a youth thus spent; already the punishment and repayment are hard at hand. "Successful violence brings temporary rewards--power, rule, dominion; but for this he has bartered honour, fame, youth, conscience: every stake, every ruse, has been used, and he gains but defeat, disgrace, and contempt. It must be hard, very hard, for the proud man to live on thus. I pitied him, and could feel for him as he fondled his young son, a lovely little naked savage, who lay crouching at his side. He had two or three other children, all strikingly handsome.... "We were ultimately obliged to refuse his escort. 'It is well,' said he, 'whether you go or stay, all Dahhal has, all his enemies have left him, is yours.' We asked him if he saw any change in the Arab since he remembered: he looked quietly round at his tents, at his camels now crowded round them, the flocks lowing to their homes; his dress, his arms, and then said, 'No: since the time of the Prophets--since time was, we are unchanged; perhaps poorer, perhaps less hospitable in consequence; but otherwise unchanged.' He made a very just remark afterwards: 'Our habits are the only ones adapted to the country we live in; they cannot change unless we change our country: no other life can be lived here.'" Our travellers, sending their horses and servants along the banks of the Tigris, themselves embarked on board a raft composed of inflated skins; and their voyage, after many incidents, terminated in the following scene:--