The barrier which exists between the fellah and the European official is almost insurmountable. Not many officials visit the country districts at all; when they do they stop at the shekhs’ houses, and are always attended by servants, before whom no man would speak if he could avoid it, as they would talk about him to the natives in the offices. Then the fellah is timid, dreads men who go about on prancing horses, and wear riding-boots and spurs--all that means police and terrorism to him. Unless therefore there is something very seriously amiss, the fellah in general will not fly to the European official, on the rare occasion when he sees him in the distance, and get himself into the fire by trying to put some one else into the frying-pan. If any one wanted to learn what was going on, and what was the state of affairs, let him go on foot occasionally and tramp through some villages, chat to the people by the way, avoid the shekhs like poison; and, while not at all disguising who he was in conversation, move about in as different a manner to the ordinary official as he possibly can. Some wiseacres have even said, ‘Well, let them petition if there is anything amiss.’ Petition, indeed! from people who cannot write, and have no knowledge in general of who is the proper official to appeal to, or where he is! If they go to one of the clerks at the wayside--where they sit about the office doors,--he will at once inform the natives in the very office which may be in fault: if they go to the village scribe, he is generally a right-hand man of the shekh, who may be the very defendant in question. No! European administration, except in important or flagrant cases, scarcely touches the life of the fellah directly.