The contents are various, since, trusting to the ignorance of the purchaser, the charm-writer may put down the first thing that comes into his head, perhaps even lewd poetry, or the name of God written in various fantastic ways. Some charm-writers are quite illiterate, and their works are mere childish scribblings. A friend enquired of one of the better Shêkhs whether he had any faith himself in what he wrote, the reply being merely, “The Arabs like them so I write them.” I suppose the corollary, “and I like the money they pay for them,” may be taken for granted. I was talking of amulets to one of my sailors. “The paper in this,” he said, indicating a dingy silver case hung by a bit of string round his neck, “was worth four pounds.” (This is two months’ pay.) “When I was in Suakin I went to a shêkh there as I was ill. He was a great Fakir, a great Shêkh, and his tomb is now in the middle of the bazaar. He told me he had a very good paper by him, and if I wore it for twelve days, I should, if it pleased God, become well. The price of this paper was four pounds, but I said, ‘I have only ten shillings.’ ‘Never mind,’ said he, ‘give me the rest if my words come true.’ And after twelve days I got better. He was no liar.” I was anxious to know whether the balance of the four pounds had been actually paid over or not, but my diplomatic questions were met by an impenetrable reserve, and the conversation was deflected into theology. “The Fakir does not say ‘you must get better’ after so many days, but only ‘if it is God’s will’.” The common way of dissolving the ink of the writing in water and drinking it as medicine, is practised here. Sometimes the fakir may instruct the patient to burn a piece of it each day on a censer, enclosing the smoke in his clothes and so fumigating himself with it. My clerk called on a sailor who was ill, or thought he was. The cause of illness was presumed to be the issue against him of a bad writing by some malicious person unknown, so the obvious cure was to get a counterblast written by someone friendly to the bewitched sufferer. Do not imagine the romance of oriental wizardry, or of mediaeval alchemists with patriarchal beards! Superstition is, in reality, most dingily matter-of-fact. The good fairy who wrote the counterblast is a fat, waddling, little man, with tiny screwed-up eyes in a face expressing only good-natured commonplaceness, as completely as his figure expresses laziness and love of food. He is in fact as much like a grocer as an eastern magician, but he is a good little man too, and has undertaken the work of village schoolmaster, and teaches the boys the correct bowings and postures of prayer, without any remuneration.