present despot, an event to which they look forward with pleasure, as the first months of a new governor are generally marked by clemency and justice. [p.51] The Arabians are a very proud, high-spirited nation; and this may be said even of those who inhabit the towns, however corrupted the true Bedouin character may be among this degenerate race. They despise every nation that does not speak the Arabic language, or that differs in manners; they have, besides, been accustomed, for many years, to look upon Turks as a very inferior people, who, whenever they entered the Hedjaz, were overawed by the power of the sherif. The rigid ceremonial of a Turkish court was not adapted to the character and established notions of Mohammed Aly’s new subjects. The sherif, in the height of his power, resembled a great Bedouin Sheikh, who submits to be boldly and often harshly addressed. A Turkish Pasha is approached with the most abject forms of servitude. “Whenever the Sherif Ghaleb wanted a loan of money,” observed one of the first merchants of the Hedjaz to me, “he sent for three or four of us; we sat in close discourse with him for a couple of hours, often quarrelling loudly, and we always reduced the sum to something much less than was at first demanded. When we went to him on ordinary business, we spoke to him as I now speak to you; but the Pasha keeps us standing before him in an humble attitude, like so many Habesh (Abyssinian) slaves, and looks down upon us as if we were beings of an inferior creation. I would rather,” he concluded, “pay a fine to the sherif than receive a favour from the Pasha.” The little knowledge which the Turks possess of the Arabic language, their bad pronunciation of it even in reciting prayers from the Koran, the ignorance of Arabia and its peculiarities which they betray in every act, are so many additional causes to render them hateful or despicable in the eyes of the Arabs. The Turks return an equal share of contempt and dislike. Whoever does not speak the language of the Turkish soldier, or does not dress like one, is considered as a fellah, or boor, a term which they have been in the habit of applying to the Egyptian peasants, as beings in the lowest [p.52] state of servitude and oppression. Their hatred of the Arabian race is greater, because they cannot indulge their tyrannical disposition with impunity, as they are accustomed to do in Egypt, being convinced by experience that an Arabian, when struck, will strike again. The Arabians particularly accuse the Turks of treachery, in seizing the sherif and sending him to Turkey after he had declared for the Pasha, and permitted Djidda and Mekka to be occupied by the Turkish troops, who, they assert, would never, without the assistance of the sherif, have been able to make any progress in Arabia, much less to acquire a firm footing therein.