sively, "I be found that way by my sense, by my head!" Too vain to ask or to learn, he subjected us to the same inconveniences day after day, for the past disappears from the dragomanic mind as utterly as yesterday's landscape from his eye.

The moon brightened the golden sleeve that first Nile evening, as the commander descended the steep bank, superintending the embarking of the luggage; and while he spreads the cloth and the crew gather about the kitchen to sing, we will hang in our gallery the portrait of his coadjutor, Hadji Hamed, the cook.

III.

HADJI HAMED.

I WAS donkeying one morning through the bazaars of Cairo, looking up at the exquisitely elaborated overhanging lattices, wondering if the fences of Paradise were not so rarely inwrought, dreaming of the fair Persian slave, of the Princess Shemselnihar, the three ladies of Bagdad, and other mere star dust, my eye surfeiting itself the while with forms and costumes that had hitherto existed only in poems and pictures, when I heard suddenly, "Have you laid in any potatoes?" and beheld beaming elderly John Bull by my side.

"It occurred to me." said he, "that the long days upon the Nile might be a little monotonous, and I thought the dinner would be quite an event."

"Allah!" cried I, as the three ladies of Bagdad faded upon my fancy, "I thought we should live on sunsets on the Nile."

The beaming elderly Bull smiled quietly and glanced at his gentle rotundity, while I saw bottles,

boxes, canisters, baskets, and packages of all sizes laid aside in the shop-little anti-monotonous arrangements for the Nile.

"I hope you have a good cook," said John Bull, as he moved placidly away upon his donkey, and was lost in the dim depths of the bazaar.

Truly we were loved of the Prophet, for our cook was also a Mohammed, an Alexandrian, and doubtless especially favored, not for his name's sake only, but because he had been a pilgrim to Mecca, and hence a Hadji forever after. It is a Mohammedan title, equivalent to our "major" and "colonel" as a term of honor, with this difference, that with us it is not always necessary to have been a captain to be called such; but in Arabia is no man a Hadji who has not performed the Mecca pilgrimage. Whether a pilgrimage to Paris, and devotion to sundry shrines upon the Boulevards, had not been as advantageous to Hadji Hamed as kissing the holy Mecca-stone, was a speculation which we did not indulge; for his cuisine was admirable.

Yet I sometimes fancied the long lankness of the Hadji Hamed's figure, streaming in his far-flowing whiteness of garment up the Boulevards, and claiming kindred with the artistes of the "Café" or of the "Maison dorée." They would needs have sacré bleu'd. Yet might the Hadji have well challenged them to

the "kara kooseh," or "warah mahshee," or the "yakhnee," nor have feared the result. Those are the cabalistic names of stuffed gourds, of a kind of mince-pie in a pastry of cabbage leaves, and of a stewed meat seasoned with chopped onions. Nor is the Christian palate so hopelessly heretic that it can not enjoy those genuine Muslim morsels. For we are nothing on the Nile if not eastern. Egyptians like sweet dishes; even fowls they stuff with raisins, and the rich conclude their repasts with draughts of khushaf-a water boiled with raisins and sugar, and flavored with rose. Mr. Lane says it is the "sweet water" of the Persians.

The

And who has dreamed through the Arabian Nights that could eat without a thrill, lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts, or quaff sherbet of roses, haply of violet, without a vision of Haroun's pavilion and his lovely ladies? Is a pastry cook's shop a mere pastry cook's shop, when you eat cheesecakes there? Shines not the Syrian sun suddenly over it, making all the world Damascus, and all people Agib, and Benreddin Hassan, and the lady of beauty? Even in these slightest details no region is so purely property of the imagination as the East. We know it only in poetry, and although there is dirt and direful deformity, the traveller sees it no more than the fast-flying swallow, to whom the dreadful

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mountain abysses and dumb deserts are but soft shadows and shining lights in his air-seen picture of the world.

The materials for this poetic Eastern larder are very few upon the Nile; chickens and mutton are the staple, and chance pigeons shot on the shore, during a morning's stroll. The genius of the artiste is shown in his adroit arrangement and concealment of this monotonous material. Hadji Hamed's genius was Italian, and every dinner was a success. He made every dinner the event which Bull was convinced it would be, or ought to be; and, perhaps, after all, the Hadji's soft custard was much the same as the sunset diet of which, in those Cairo days, I dreamed.

Our own larder was very limited; for as we sailed slowly along those shores of sleep, we observed too intense an intimacy of the goats with the sheep.

The white-bearded goats wandered too much at their own sweet will with the unsuspecting lambs, or the not all unwilling elderly sheep. The natives are not fastidious, and do not mind a mellow goatflavor. They drink a favorite broth made of the head, feet, skin, wool, and hoofs, thrust into a pot and half boiled. Then they eat, with unction, the unctuous remains. We began bravely with roast and boiled; but orders were issued, at length, that

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