38 Professor Browne in Egypt [ J 903 



trust and allowed the English to march past him without giving 



warning. 



" gth Jan. — To-night we are encamped near a high sand dune, 

 from the top of which there is a fine view of the line of the Suez 

 Canal with the low sandhills beyond it, and far away southwards 

 Jebel Attaka and the line of hills to Hamum; close at hand Abu 

 Tufaileh, where there are some palms, not far from Ismailia, which 

 is also distinctly in sight. There are shepherds and camelherds of the 

 Maaze near, some in tents, some squatted under bushes, all very 

 happy. We saw a fox, a hare, an eagle owl and the track of two 

 wolves. An immense spider of a light sand colour, with brown bars, 

 was found in my tent in the morning about three inches across. I 

 never saw the like in any of my journeys. 



" 13th Jan. — Travelling all day across the great gravel plain south 

 of the Wady in a straight line to Om Kamr. On the way we met 

 Abdallah Ibn Majelli, of the Hannadi Arabs, out on a hawking ex- 

 pedition, with four dependents, two hawks, and five greyhounds. 

 These last, as it turned out, were all descendants of our old English 

 greyhound bitch Fly, a daughter of whose, Jerboa, we gave some 

 fifteen years ago to Prince Ahmed. In spite of many crosses with 

 Arab greyhounds the English type is well preserved, though the dogs 

 are smaller and lighter. Their master told us they were quite ac- 

 climatised, and stood the heat and the hard ground as well as their 

 own greyhounds, retaining something of their English speed. We 

 saw them kill a hare after a rather long course among the small 

 bushes with which the plain was sprinkled. The hare must have 

 doubled forty times before the greyhounds got her. One of the 

 hawks waited overhead, but did not pursue the hare after the first 

 minute. The party had got a hubhara also in the morning. They 

 were suspicious of us when we first rode up to them. I fancy that, 

 being away from their own dira, they were afraid. 



" 14th Jan. — Rode in to Sheykh Obeyd. 



" 22nd Jan. — Professor Browne from Cambridge came to lunch- 

 eon, bringing a letter to me from Alfred Lyall. He is most intelli- 

 gent about Eastern things, not merely as an Orientalist, but also po- 

 litically. He has lived some time in Persia, and has written a couple 

 of books about it, and knows Persian and Turkish and Arabic, but 

 having little colloquial knowledge of the last, has come here to prac- 

 tise it. With this view he has been attending Mohammed Abdu's lec- 

 tures on the Koran at the Azhar, and already understands them fairly 

 well, but his accent in talking is peculiar. We took him to see 

 Mutlak and Suliman in their tents, the first ' houses of hair ' he has 

 ever sat under. He has been seeing something of our English offi- 

 cials here, and tells amusing stories about them, especially about 



