vessels are beyond and above the West Asiatic and the African. He
becomes at the best a kind of imitation Jack Tar. He will not, or
rather he cannot, take the necessary trouble, concentrate his
attention, fix his mind upon his "duties." He says "Inshallah;"
he relies upon Allah; and he prays five times a day, when he
should be giving or receiving orders. The younger generation of
officers, it is true, drinks wine, and does not indulge in
orisons whilst it should be working; but its efficiency is
impaired by the difficulties and delay in granting pensions. The
many grey beards, however carefully dyed, suggest an equipage de
veterans.

The consequence of yawing and of running half-speed by night was
that we reached Jebel Hassani just before noon, instead of eight
a.m., on the 25th. The island, whose profile slopes to the
south-eastward, is a long yellow-white ridge, a lump of coralline
four hundred feet high, bare and waterless in summer: yet it
feeds the Bedawi flocks at certain seasons. It is buttressed and
bluff to the south-west, whence the strongest winds blow; and it
is prolonged by a flat spit to the south-east, and by a long tail
of two vertebrae, a big and a little joint, trending north-west.
Thus it gives safe shelter from the Wester to Arab
barques;[EN#47] and still forms a landmark for those navigating
between Jeddah, Kusayr, and Suez. Its parallel runs a few miles
north of the Dadalus Light (north lat. 24 55' 30") to the west;
and it lies a little south of El-Haura on the coast, and of
El-Medinah, distant about one hundred and thirty direct miles in
the interior. If Ptolemy's latitudes are to be consulted, Jebel
Hassani would be the Timagenes Island in north lat. 25 40'; and
the corresponding Chersonesus Point is represented by the