A round wooden table was placed in the centre, and each guest was provided with several flat round wheaten loaves, which served as plates, and some strips of thin native bread, which looks rather like pancake, only darker and more solid. The meal consisted mostly of mutton, cooked in various ways—boiled, fried and stewed—with different kinds of vegetables, salads, spices, curries and flavourings. One of the dishes, a very excellent one, was stewed doves, eaten with fresh grapes. The pudding was the least appetising dish on the menu, it was made of crumbled bread, mixed into a sticky mass with “semna” oil and sugar. There were about a dozen courses. Each one was brought in in a big dish of polished ebony and placed on the table. The guests ate from the central dish, using the thin bread to pick up the meat. One takes a piece of thin bread between finger and thumb, dips into the dish, sandwiching the meat in the bread. It sounds a messy proceeding, but after a little practice I found it quite simple. Servants brought round a brass ewer, and each guest washed his hands after every course; the Siwans also rinsed their mouths—noisily. Every now and then some one would fish out an extra succulent morsel and hand it to me, or if one man had secured a tasty bone he would tear off the meat and heap it on to my loaf. Towards the end of the meal a few loud hiccoughs are not considered amiss, and to loosen one’s belt, very obviously, is thought most complimentary. One needs it too! The food was very good, excellently cooked, and so tender that there was no difficulty in separating the meat from the bones. When I thought, and felt, that we had finished, there followed an enormous dish heaped high with perfectly plain boiled rice. This is called “Shawish”—The Sergeant—because it clears away the other dishes! Afterwards an enormous copper tray was carried in by two boys loaded with every kind of fruit—plums, peaches, pears, grapes, apricots and figs. Last of all came tea, and bowls of palm wine for those who liked it. It is made from the sap of the date palm, and when freshly drawn it tastes like sweet ginger-beer, but a little goes a very long way.