ostrich feathers, and having a small book of prayers and charms
placed in the midst of it, wrapped up in a piece of silk. (My
description is taken from the Egyptian Mahmal.) When on the road,
it serves as a holy banner to the caravan; and on the return of
the Egyptian caravan, the book of prayers is exposed in the mosque
El Hassaneyn, at Cairo, where men and women of the lower classes
go to kiss it and obtain a blessing by rubbing their foreheads
upon it. No copy of the Koran, nor any thing but the book of
prayers, is placed in the Cairo Mahmal. I believe the custom to
have arisen in the battle-banner of the Bedouins, called Merkeb
and Otfe, which I have mentioned in my remarks on the Bedouins,
and which resemble the Mahmal, inasmuch as they are high wooden
frames placed upon camels.


* * * * *


SOUTH AMERICAN MANNERS

_From the Memoirs of General Miller, Second Edition._


In the Pampas, where a scarcity of food is unknown to the poorest, that
calculating avarice which, in its fears for to-morrow, would look with
apathy on the wants of the stranger, can have but a limited sway. Kind
offices are, therefore more freely and disinterestedly conferred than
in less abundant regions. In addition to this, the dearth of society
in a thinly-sprinkled population renders the presence of a traveller
on their isolated _haciendas_ a source of gratification. If his