_Tuesday, 17th._--Completed my sketches in the morning. In the evening, Si Achmet, his son, and three nephews, one of whom I neither knew nor had invited (this is entirely Arabic--I might, also, have taken any one with me to dine with them) came to dine on board. It was a very droll ceremony--the Arabs had, with one exception, probably never sat at a table on a chair before, but they were so entirely simple as not to be (also, by-the-bye, with one exception) at all ridiculous. Ottilio had, perhaps with a little malice, arranged the napkins in a most artistic and intricate fashion; these edifices so impressed my friends that they did not sit down opposite to their plates but on one side of them. I set them at once comparatively at their ease by requesting them, through Hosseyn, to consider themselves at home and eat with their fingers, forgiving me if I followed the custom of my country; the proposal was received with great satisfaction by the old gentleman and his son, who fell to in their own way, the father muttering his appreciation of the dishes in low, sonorous ejaculations: "Allah!"--"Mash Allah!"--"Ou Allah!"--"Ameer! Ameer!" &c. &c. &c. The son, a man of about forty, with a broken nose and a very strong squint, and whose movements carried a general impression of contemplative dreaminess, always verging on surprise, ate with his usual deliberation and spent his odd moments in contemplating a shining bunch of fingers, which he periodically and slowly licked with the utmost impartiality; he did not mix in the conversation. Of the three cousins on my left, two made a very fair attempt at using the knife and fork, though it must have been a virgin effort; the third, who had been a great deal with English people when he was consul at Khossayr, ate his dinner and put down his wine like the best European; I suspect, in fact, that he was brought as a show man. Achmet, in a climax of gratification, exclaimed towards the end of dinner, "By Allah! if the Ameer comes to my house another year, he shall be served after the Frankish custom." Arabs appear to be much devoted to _limonade gazeuse_--without being the forbidden fruit of wine itself, it dwells in bottles, and has a sort of air of crime about it which no doubt pleases them; my left-hand neighbour took off at least two bottles during dinner.