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Pleased with the prospect of still seeing my journey to Soudan completed. Weather this morning very dull, sky overcast, a few drops of rain falling. Early Sheikh Hateetah sent for me. Went and found the Consul of the English better in health. He shewed me his scarlet burnouse and gold-braided coat, given him by our Government.
His repute of sanctity fills the surrounding deserts with its holy odours. The number of miracles he performs is prodigious. His leathern burnouse, like the Holy Tunic of Treves, is frequently carried about to cure the sick and work miracles. Coming home, I had a visit from some Touaricks of Aheer. They were uncommonly civil, addressing me: "If you go with us, you have nothing to fear.
"My dear boy," laughed Lescott, "I can introduce you in New York studios to many distinguished gentlemen who would feel that their heads had been shorn if they let their locks get as short as yours. In New York, you might stroll along Broadway garbed in turban and a burnouse without greatly exciting anybody. I think my own hair is as long as yours."
The Turk in his turban, the Arab in his burnouse, the Chinaman with shaven scalp and queue, the black son of Africa, the red Indian, the swarthy Mestize, yellow Mulatto, the olive Malay, the light graceful Creole, and the not less graceful Quadroon, jostle each other in its streets, and jostle with the red-blooded races of the North, the German and Gael, the Russ and Swede, the Fleming, the Yankee, and the Englishman.
He wore an Arab haick upon his head bound with many yards of brown camel's hair, a long white garment, something like a burnouse, only embroidered at the edge with crimson thread and confined at the waist by a girdle containing quite a small arsenal of weapons, while at his back he carried a rifle of European manufacture, and around his neck was the invariable string of amulets.
I shall add no more, thanking God, that, with all my follies, I did not commit such a folly, as first to ape the Mussulman, and then repudiate it in print before the world. 25th. Took a walk and went to see the Kaed. His Excellency was sitting outside, washed and clean shaved, for once whilst I saw him, with a thin white burnouse thrown over his shoulders. It was a saint's day with him.
Mahommed Kafa was one of our best friends at Ghât, and had always a smile to greet us with a great relief in a country where most of the people you meet have a frown on their brows and their mouths closely muffled up. This man is the most considerable merchant of Ghât, and exerted himself greatly to procure us an escort of Kailouees. I gave a white burnouse to him and his son.
He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my head," explained Simeon. Britt looked at Kate.
Maddened by the obstinacy of the animal, he seized hold of an old burnouse, and rushing up, threw it over its head. Then drawing the rag tightly around its snout, he fastened it in such a manner as completely to stop up the nostrils.
The very idea of a dromedary carries along with it the cognate spectacle of an Arab on its back a slim, sinewy individual of swarth complexion and picturesque garb, a bright burnouse streaming around his body, with a twisted turban on his head.
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