It seems that the black slave came to her, as she lay bound on the ground, for the purpose of cutting her throat; on which she said, “If you want to cut my throat in order to get my bracelets and earrings, here they are, and welcome. I only gave two piastres for the bracelets, and one for the earrings," and she took them off and threw them to him; on which the chief of the band, picking them up, threw them back to her with the remark, "We don't want your false rubbish," and called off his black comrade. They were really solid gold, and the clever wench saved her life and her jewels by her ready wit. Not uncommonly the police are in league with the robbers; and this must have been the case in this instance, for out of IIO town guardians, only two were proved to have been on duty on the night of the occurrence, and of these one was shot. Hence there was no possibility of instituting a pursuit at the time. It is an unfortunate fact that the common people seem to get demoralised in proportion as they are brought in contact with foreigners. Thus the servants in the large towns, and the Nile boatmen, are among the K most dishonest classes in the population. An instance of the moral code prevalent among the latter came under my notice one day, when we were lying wind-bound, moored to a sandy islet in the river. A large dahabeeya, laden with grain, came and moored alongside, and I observed the crew busy, apparently throwing the grain in the air to clean it. Upon my inquiring why they chose the time and place for this operation, I was informed that the boat was consigned to some foreign house in Cairo, but that the Reis was making a little speculation out of the cargo on his own account, and having sold some of it at a neighbouring town, was now engaged making up the deficient weight with fine sand. When the whole was thoroughly mixed he would damp it a little, so as to increase the bulk and weight of his cargo to the requisite extent. This proceeding was carried on openly under the eyes of our crew, who considered it a perfectly natural one. Merchants who are conversant with frauds of this kind, constantly practised by the crews of Nile boats, usually send a trustworthy person with their cargoes, as watchman. The great amount of European travel on the river of late years, the lavish expenditure of backsheesh, and the opportunities which exist for swindling the unsophisticated traveller, have made the Nile boatmen a greedy, rapacious, and, unless they are kept well in hand, an insolent class of the community. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the people are peaceable and easily managed, contented with little, and grateful for kind treatment, though lacking in enterprise or energy, a defect which, however, may rather be due to a long course of bad government than to the inherent absence of those qualities. Now that they are regularly paid for their day's labour by the Daira Sanieh and Domaine administrations, they show themselves industrious enough; and there is no difficulty in getting labour where they feel they can rely upon the mouffetish. There is, however, a great contrast in the methods in which the estates of the Daira Sanieh are administered, depending on the individual capacity and honesty of the mouffetishes. Each of these functionaries administers a teftish or farm, varying in size from 10,000 to 50,000 acres,—the whole Daira Sanieh lands amounting to about half a million |