14 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

The water swarmed with boats before the anchor dropped, and the Egyptian health officer had no sooner departed

than we were boarded by a crowd of dragomen, hotel run-

ners, and boatmen. A squinting Arab, who wore a white

dress and red sash, accosted me in Italian, offering to conduct me to the Oriental Hotel. A Grerman and a Smyrniote,

whose acquaintance I had made during the voyage, joined me

in accepting his services, and we were speedily boated ashore.

We landed on a pile of stones, not far from a mean-looking

edifice called the Custom-House. Many friends were there to welcome us, and I shall never forget the eagerness with which

they dragged us ashore, and the zeal with which they pom-

melled one another in their generous efforts to take charge of

our effects. True, we could have wished that their faces had

been better washed, their baggy trousers less ragged and their

red caps less greasy, and we were perhaps ungrateful in allow-

ing our Arab to rate them soundly and cuff the ears of the

more obstreperous, before our trunks and carpet-bags could be

portioned among them. At the Custom-House we were visit-

ed by two dark gentlemen, in turbans and black flowing robes,

who passed our baggage without scrutiny, gently whispering

in our ears, " backsheesh,'''' — a word which we then heard for the first time, but which was to be the key-note of much of our future experience. The procession of porters was then set in

motion, and we passed through several streets of whitewashed

two story houses, to the great square of the Frank quarter,

which opened before us warm and brilliant in the morning sun-

shine.

The principal hotels and consulates front on this square.

The architecture is Italian, with here and there a dash of Sar-