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My favourite walk, after the heat of the day, was to the little cemetery where Hafiz, the Persian poet, lies at rest a quiet, secluded spot, on the side of a hill, in a clump of dark cypress trees a gap cut through which shows the drab-coloured city, with its white minarets and gilt domes shining in the sun half a mile away.
There was a little table in front of the window, with a small looking-glass upon it, and a cane-seated chair was placed by the bedside and the floor was covered with a faded piece of drab-coloured carpet of no perceptible pattern, worn into holes in several places. In the middle of this dreary room, upon a pair of tressels, was the coffin containing Philpot's body.
Patches of blue sea break the white city outline, and the towers of the mosques rise above it all: their tesselated surfaces, tiled in shades of green and polished by the years, shimmer in the sunshine like peacocks' tails. Two or three gateways pierce the drab-coloured city wall, their horseshoe-shaped arches washed over with salmon-pink.
Here was really a sad embarrassment—no bed; nothing to offer the invalid in the shape of food save a piece of thin, tough, flexible, drab-coloured cloth, made of flour and mill-stones in equal proportions, and called by the name of “bread”; then the patient, of course, had no “confidence in his medical man,” and on the whole, the best chance of saving my comrade seemed to lie in taking him out of the reach of his doctor, and bearing him away to the neighbourhood of some more genial consul.
We rode on, praying for a breeze which never came: the sun literally sizzled on the baked desert, the rocks gave out an oven-like heat, and the rarefied air oscillated over the wastes. It was too hazy for more than glimpses of the Atlas and their snows: as far as we could see stretched only illimitable drab-coloured plain, broken by the flat-topped hills.
In a few minutes the door opened, and the bookseller entered. Mr. Christopher Plaskwith was a short, stout man, in drab-coloured breeches, and gaiters to match; a black coat and waistcoat; he wore a large watch-chain, with a prodigious bunch of seals, alternated by small keys and old-fashioned mourning-rings. His complexion was pale and sodden, and his hair short, dark, and sleek.
"Hist, Silvestro," whispered one, with a nudge; "did he bleed much?" "Cosa terribile a flood!" Silvestro spread out his hands. "Cristo! The glory of it!" "Valentino, I scrag you, my man, if you speak of the Jew till we are out of the Porta San Zuan," growled Petruccio, the leader: "Avanti!" And the drab-coloured crew moved off towards the sunset.
He was a short-legged, long-bodied, corpulent little man. He wore a brown coat, with ample skirts, and a vast expanse of vest, with drab-coloured small-clothes and gaiters. B was a jolly, good-natured looking man, with an easy blunt manner which might easily pass for honesty. Q had sold him a lot of wild land in some out-of-the-way township, by making Mr.
Our evening at the foot of El-Ruways was cheered, despite the flies, the earwigs, and the biting Ba'uzah beetle, which here first put in an appearance, by the weird and fascinating aspect of the southern Hisma-wall, standing opposite to us, and distant about a mile from the dull drab-coloured basin, El-Majra.
The carriages swarmed with children, with luggage and litter. The floors were a mess of spilled tea, broken earthenware cups and splintered wooden boxes. Cheap baggage was piled up everywhere, with wicker baskets, paper parcels, bundles of drab-coloured wraps, and cases of imitation leather.
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