Upon our first arrival the people appeared to me very hospitable. Every morning and evening large dishes of bread and meat and milk, often much more than we could eat, were sent to us from different quarters. This lasted for five or six days, when those who had sent the dishes came to ask for presents, as tokens of friendship; this was well understood to be a demand of repayment; and we found ourselves obliged to give ten times the value of what we had eaten. In general foreign merchants are considered as “good morsels” (لقُمةَ as the Arabs say), of which every body bites off as much as he can; we were the whole day beset by people who came to ask for presents, but our companions were old traders; they well knew to whom it would have been imprudent to deny a favour, but never made the smallest present, except when necessary. I have had people running after me the whole day praying to have a piece of soap to wash their shirt. Had I listened to them I should have had ten demands of the same kind the next day. It may be taken as a general rule in these countries never to make any presents unasked, or to give more than half of what is requested, for a traveller will find it more useful to his purposes to have the reputation of parsimony, than that of generosity. The same advice would not be suitable in Syria or Egypt, and it may here be remarked, that of all the duties which belong to the traveller, that of knowing the proper seasons for making or withholding presents is the most troublesome and difficult, not only in the Negroe countries, but in every part of the East known to me.