broken sheer down in the attempt, ... the book makes no impression on my
mind. I cannot find where I left off when I recur to it. That so tedious
and shallow a work can meet such praises gives me a lower and lower idea
of the power of mind in these nations. I now think that the Arabs are
captivated by the tinkle and epigrammatic point of an old and sacred
dialect, while Turks and Persians take its literary beauty as a religious
fact to be believed, not to be felt. How wonderful is the power of
tradition!"

In July, Newman and his party were still at Aleppo. By now they had become
well accustomed to the native foods, but had at last come to the
conclusion that the meat (mutton) was certainly not good; unfortunately it
formed a large proportion of the stews. One dish consisted of rice,
dressed with butter and salt This is called "Pilau" (pronounced "ow"), and
apparently is the same as that common in Russia to-day, which is
_delicious_.

"This pilau is, fundamentally, rice dressed with butter and salt: the rice
is thrown into boiling water, and is boiled for twenty minutes only. This
is the highest luxury of the Bedouins. We saw a company of them dine on
it. They scraped the hot outside of the rice with the tips of their
fingers, squeezed it into a ball in their hand, and shot the ball into
their mouth. The dexterity of this, so as not to burn their fingers, miss
their mouths, nor drop about their garments, is astonishing.... Carrots
with lemon or sour milk make delicious fritters...."

It was during this month that the news came to them from Bagdad that Mr.
Groves (who, it will be remembered, had been there for some time,
expecting them later to join him) had just lost his wife from plague; that
she had been the only one who had caught the disease. Newman himself,