AUNAUT CAMP. 117 generally fastened with innumerable buttons, are of a different colour from the jacket, usually bright red or green, and the naked foot is thrust into old slippers. Over an old torn scarf or shawl is worn a leathern girdle, in which are carried their ornaments, all valuables, and deadly weapons of every kind; at the back hang two small leathern pouches for powder and ball, along with a small flask holding oil for their arms ; during war they carry a long musket, and with it, in spite of its short and awkward stock, they take sure and deadly aim. "When I last met with them, they had formed a camp near Cairo, and my brother, as medicine major of the chief hospital, Kasr-el-ain, received orders to visit their sick. Arm in arm we held our way boldly down the centre of the street, till near the gates we fell in with two bodies of them, singing, shouting, and half drunk, who seemed inclined to block up the way. My brother cried out " dropp'' (out of that); v/hat charm lay in the word I know not, but the line opened and we passed through uninsulted, though in European garb. Ere long we met the second body, and passed them in like way, but in doing so, I greeted one or two of them in Greek, on which many of them rushed up to me, and hailing me as a brother and compatriot, embraced me, insisting on escorting us into the camp. These Arnauts are merely irregular troops, acting as tiralleurs, and generally as it pleases themselves ; their officers are always fellow-countrymen. Brave and death defying they are, but only on those occasions when they look for spoil ; indifferent and even cowardly where honour alone is the prize, at it they laugh, as at the sufferings of their prisoners, whom they often murder with cruellest tortures. Better they know not ; living in their own land without almost any agriculture, industry, or trade, they support themselves by war, plunder, and murder, till at length, forced by starvation to quit it, they seek richer and more favoured lands, in which to pursue their horrid trade. At the present day few Arnauts are to be found in Egypt, the late arrivals having been rapidly forwarded to where they were soon expended. During our residence at Cairo, there arrived in the Arnaut camp before the city, a regiment of them from Syria ; as usual these were to be seen drunk, quarrelling, and committing all kinds of excesses in I 3