A PSEUDO ARAB. $5 



contemplated making in the Liverpool ship Ganges, in the 

 month of June, 1 8 . 



During our stay at Bombay we were one day strolling 

 through the streets, when we entered a billiard-room, and 

 had not long been engaged in a game, when a very fine-look- 

 ing man, dressed in full Arab costume, and with wide flow- 

 ing beard, entered. He soon began to converse with us in 

 very good English, and elicited from us all the particulars of 

 our journey to Bombay. He hinted that he was an Arab 

 merchant; that he possessed a pretty bungalow a short dis- 

 tance from the fort, and that if we were not afraid to trust 

 ourselves to the care and hospitality of a stranger, he should 

 be delighted with our company to smoke a chillum,* and 

 drink a cup of coffee with him in the evening, for which pur- 

 pose he would send a buggy to our tents on the esplanade 

 at a convenient hour. 



We accepted the invitation freely as it was given, pro- 

 mising ourselves some pleasure from the adventure, and about 

 dusk in the evening a well-appointed buggy appeared, and 

 we were driven a mile or two beyond the fort to a very 

 pretty garden, where the cottage, or bungalow, was nearly 

 hidden beneath a profusion of tropical trees. Our host, who 

 was seated beneath their shade, on a handsome carpet spread 

 upon the ground, and smoking his hookah, beckoned us to 

 him without rising, and invited us to follow his example. 

 More hookahs were immediately brought, and some excellent 

 coffee, with, to our astonishment, its Christian accompani- 

 ment, in the shape of a flask of the finest Dutch curagoa, and 

 a taper bottle of old cognac, of which we were smilingly 

 invited to partake. 



Full of admiration of the liberal views of our Arab host 

 as far as the inner man was concerned, we were still more 



* Hookah. 



