Poor Pasha! It was as clear as the noonday sun why 10,000 followers had dwindled in number to Bilal, the solitary one! After a patient and scrupulous analysis of the why and wherefore of these events, the result is manifest, and we see the utter unfitness of the scientific student and the man of unsuspecting heart to oppose these fawning, crafty rogues, who have made fraud and perfidy their profession. At the same time, it is not so clear that, had he penetrated their dissimulating wiles, and grappled with these evil men boldly, and crushed the heads of these veterans in falsehood and craft, that his position would have been safer than it was. Each man, however, follows his own nature, and must abide the consequences of his judgment and acts. But all must admit, that what is so far written does infinite credit to his heart.
April 6th.—Sixty-five natives have arrived here, sent by the chief Mazamboni as carriers, to be ready for the 10th instant.
Osman Latif Effendi, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, was once much addicted to inebriety, but of late years he has become a rigid abstainer, and such an absorbed reader of the Koran that not long ago his clothes were aflame before he was aware of it.
1889.
April 6.
Kavalli’s.
During the sudden muster of the day before yesterday, and the fierce declaration of my intentions, he became energetic himself, and I found that energy, as well as disease, becomes contagious. He had prepared for an immediate start after us. His mother, an old lady, seventy-five years old, with a million of wrinkles in her ghastly white face, was not very fortunate in her introduction to me, for, while almost at white heat, she threw herself before me in the middle of the square, jabbering in Arabic to me, upon which, with an impatient wave of the hand, I cried, “Get out of this; this is not the place for old women.” She lifted her hands and eyes up skyward, gave a little shriek, and cried, “O Allah!” in such tragic tones that almost destroyed my character. Every one in the square witnessed the limp and shrunk figure, and laughed loudly at the poor old thing as she beat a hasty retreat.
While arranging his eleven loads, consisting of baskets of provisions, carpets, and cooking pots and family bedding, Osman Latif Effendi held the Koran between thumb and finger, and alternately appealed to the Arabic lines, and to the Arab lares and penates in the baskets.
