CAIRO TO KISUMU In the bazaars the merchants sit in little booths no bigger than the packing-box of a piano. A ledge about two feet high, and of about the same width, runs along the front of the store, on which the customers sit. A purchaser is usually offered coffee, and asked to take a smoke out of the long-stemmed water pipe of the proprietor. It takes a great time to make a deal, for the Mohammedan always asks three times what he expects to get, and never comes down without bargaining. The better merchants all keep book accounts, which they foot up in Arabic charac¬ ters, taking the ink out of a brass inkstand with a handle a foot long which is so made that it will contain the pen as well as the ink. This inkwell is thrust into the belt of the gown when the proprietor leaves his shop.

If one is not satisfied at one place he can go to another. In the Cinnamon Bazaar there are dozens of stores that sell nothing but spices, and in the Shoemakers' Bazaar are the gorgeously embroidered slippers and red-leather shoes, turned up at the toes, worn by all good Moham¬ medans. In the Silver Bazaar the jewellers are at work. They use no tools of modern invention. Their bellows is a bag of goatskin with a piece of gun-barrel for the mouth and two sticks like those used for the ordinary fire bellows at the end. One's only guarantee of getting a good article is to buy the silver, have it tested by the government assayer, and let the jeweller make it up under his own eyes. Poor jewellery is often sold, and I remember buying a silver bracelet for a friend during a visit to Cairo which looked very pretty and very barbaric, but six months after its presentation it began to change colour, and proved to be brass washed with silver.

I see many watches displayed, for there is now a craze 56