PEESENT FKOM PASCHA. 7

On our departing, he sent his Mameluke to call me back, and said,

" Mu.eju, ente masduht, muscli doggeri ?" (Sir, you are discreet and

silent; is it not so?) and adding, after looking for a time in-

quiringly at me, " Taib!" (Good!) he again dismissed me. Soon

after this Dr. Gand became seriously unwell, and so irritable,

that no one save we two brothers dared approach him ; to us

he continually talked, and in German, paying no regard to his

Italian and French visitors, and on purpose tliat they might not

understand him. Unheeding my brother's well-meant advice to

quit Chartum without delay, he lingered there too long, and died

at Abu Hamet, on his way back to his former station. For a year

his body lay in the wilderness, covered with the dry sand, ei'e his

family could have it disinterred to be conveyed to France. During

his life, the kind Doctor had been little better than skin and bone, and the warm sand had converted his corpse into a kind of mummy; but it had suffered so little change, that not a feature was altered, nor a hair gone of those long, fair moustaches, from which the Pascha and his courtiers used to call the Doctor, Abu

Schennap.

When we got home after the above-mentioned audience, two handsome and fully-equipped dromedaries stood at our gates ; but

instead of being those of visitors, as we thought, they proved to be a

present from the Pascha, and were well fitted for a campaign,

both from their strength and size, and also from their having been broken to allow of firing from their backs Avithout shying or

bolting. At the Divan the Pascha had repeatedly asked me if

there was anything I wished for, and Dr. Gand had admonished me in German not to be modest, but I had no wish to appear

selfish or greedy ; we had enough, and I was too proud to desire to

divest myself of my independence by accepting presents, or putting myself under obligations of any kind. Some days after I was summoned to the Pascha ; and keeping on my shoes, as I ever did,

strode over the large carpet to near Avhere he sat, and bowed to him, while he only touched with his hand his tarbusch (red cap), and did not touch either mouth or breast, the usual sign by which,

breath, hand, and heart are placed at another's disposah I, with- out any leave asked, sat down European fashion on the divan, and took the cup of coffee offered me, without making the usual

B 4