We dare not guess how the lady of our honest friend the Dúbbah would have supported this splendid exhibition, in which her husband was so completely eclipsed; but we thought that the eyes of Shekh Mahommed himself did occasionally wander to the shining masses by his side, with something like an expression of jealousy. If it were so, however, the glance only found its way through the _corners_ of the Dúbbah’s orbs of vision; for his head kept its post with becoming solemnity, and was never once turned towards those objects of his envy, to which all other eyes were so fully directed. It must at the same time be allowed, that the toilet of Shekh Mahommed had been much more attended to than usual. He had made a temporary adjournment from his usual _only_ garment to a white cotton shirt of very decent exterior, over which he had carefully arranged a clean-looking white barracan; and he had drawn from the innermost recesses of his saddle-bags a new white burnoos of no ordinary texture, which he persuaded himself to substitute for the old and coarse brown one he had hitherto worn on the road[8]. His saddle-case was now observed to be of crimson morocco, a circumstance with which we were not before acquainted; for it had hitherto, on the journey, been turned inside out, or more properly speaking, with the outer side in, to prevent it from being soiled, and from fading in the sun. His saddle-cloth also, which had hitherto consisted of a dirty piece of white flannel, was now of bright scarlet cloth; and, besides the embroidered covers to his silver-embossed pistols, he had carefully suspended from different parts of his body a great variety of little bags, of different colours and sizes: these were the repositories of his powder and ball, and carried tinder, flints and steel, money, nails, and tobacco, with sundry other little matters too numerous to mention. By his side also hung a neat little smàat, or goat skin, with the long black hairs left to ornament and protect the outside; and which, properly speaking, was meant to hold water, but which likewise served indifferently for holding milk, oil, or butter, or any other substance which it might be necessary to carry in it. We should state that, under all this variety of ornament, Shekh Mahommed el Dúbbah sat with dignity upon his mare, a recently-acquired present from the Bashaw, whose spirit had been prudently roused on this occasion by the stimulus of an extra feed of corn. The display of Arab horsemanship which concluded the procession, received additional éclat from this precaution; and the Dúbbah’s mare, after manœuvring her head to admiration, first on one side and then on the other, and prancing, and pacing, and rearing, to the delight of the assembled spectators, no sooner felt the angle of the spur assail her sides, than she sprang forward with a bound in advance of the party, and being suddenly pulled up with a powerful bit, was thrown back upon her haunches within a foot of our tent-cords.