[p.6] any obligation in the commercial towns of Europe; but in the East, and under the circumstances in which I was placed, it was extraordinary. Yahya Effendi added, that some of his friends had given me a flattering character while at Cairo, and that he could not, therefore, entertain the slightest doubt of my solvency and respectability, in which opinion he had been confirmed on reading the letter of credit I had brought with me. As the issue of my application to the Pasha at Tayf was uncertain, I readily and gratefully accepted Yahya’s proposal; the money was immediately paid to me, the bills drawn, and a few days after, my obliging friend departed with Tousoun Pasha for Medina, where I had the pleasure of seeing him again early in the following year. I was now in possession of a sum sufficient to banish all apprehension of suffering from poverty before the arrival of fresh supplies from Egypt, whatever might be the consequence of my application to the Pasha; but Yahya Effendi was no sooner gone, than I received a somewhat favourable answer to the letter I had written to Tayf. Bosari, it appeared, had been rather unwilling to urge my request to the Pasha, afraid, perhaps, that he might himself become a sufferer, should I forfeit my word. The Pasha, however, had heard of my being at Djidda, through another person in his suite, whom I had seen there, and who had arrived at Tayf; and hearing that I was walking about in rags, he immediately despatched a messenger, with two dromedaries, to the collector of customs at Djidda, Seyd Aly Odjakly, in whose hands was the management of all the affairs of the town, with an order to furnish me a suit of clothes, and a purse of five hundred piastres as travelling money; accompanied with a request that I should repair immediately to Tayf, with the same messenger who had brought the letter. In a postscript, Seyd Aly Odjakly was enjoined to order the messenger to take me by the upper road to Tayf, which leaves Mekka to the south, the lower and more usual road passing through the middle of that town.