Here we were joined by one of my interlocutor’s friends, and I was introduced with some enthusiasm, my discoverer announcing in the tone of a naturalist who had just found a rare bug, “This gentleman speaks English as well as you and me, every bit; ’e’s a Persian, goin’ to Persia.” Well, from that moment, I became very popular among these folk, and found them very hearty indeed, especially when I gave them the information that Persia looked to constitutional England for sympathy and help, and regarded her as a natural and ancient friend; in contradistinction to the Russians, whose Cossacks she detested. The fact of my being a Persian--naturally enough, they seemed to think--gave me a claim to their friendship, and nothing pleased them more than to get me to tell them of my country’s wrongs, her aims and ambitions, her history and customs, her religion and literature, and every conceivable subject. On every such occasion I had a sympathetic and interested audience, who asked innumerable questions, and whom I was pleased to be able to enlighten considerably. They had to confess that their preconceived ideas were very changed, and the general attitude they acquired and which they were at no pains to conceal, being genuine and honest, if unpolished fellows, was that of well-informed superiority, which should assert itself on their return to England. In playing this part I suppose I was playing also a very mean trick, the only excuse for which is that I am a sincere well-wisher of Persia, where I have spent some pleasant years of my life, and this disguise afforded my assertions an extra credence and weight which no Englishman, however well informed, could hope to obtain from his countrymen on so remote a subject as Persia. So agreeably did the time pass, that I was sorry to see the hills of Beyrouth draw closer and closer. These were the last Englishmen that I should see for a long time, for my disguise quite prevented my being able to call upon consuls where they existed in towns upon my route. With considerable regret I bade them good-bye and saw them depart, led by one of those terrible creatures, a native Christian, the lust of tips and perquisites gleaming in his eyes. As I watched them, helpless and confused, being shoved this way and that, I almost envied them; for they were going to “sail” through Palestine in special trains and carriages, put up at the best hotels, and return in the same lordly fashion to England; while I was embarked upon a very different enterprise, to be conducted always with an eye to the elusive piastre, and a ready, lying tongue. And so I found myself sharing, with two Turks and an Arab Christian of Aleppo, a small boat, from which we were bundled out into the Customs with a herd of Arabs, Turks, and all kinds of Levantines.