While the Professor was bargaining for some old coins—he had’ a mania for them and was always ready to buy cheap—I made a table, and he threw the cards with the skill that comes from long practice.
I thought I could name the winning card, and so I ventured a copper piastre—about a cent—on my opinion. Many a man in America has thought he could name the card, and his faith has been lost in sight and cost him a great deal of money; I never ventured to try it among the sharpers of my native land, discovery which recalled California, Pike’s Peak, the Mississippi River, and Coney Island all at once.
An Arab of unusually dark complexion had a crowd around him, and was playing three card monte, the regular game, just as I have seen it many times in America. He was squatted in front of a strip of cloth, which he spread on the ground and used as a but I supposed that an Arab ought not to know how to deceive a New-Yorker.
To my surprise I found that my calculations were wrong, and my piastre went into the pocket of the card thrower. Then I tried to get back the money I had lost—-just as many another has tried to do—and my stake went the same way. I kept on a piastre or half a piastre at a time, watching the fellow closely, and thinking I ought to be equal to him in shrewdness. I must have tried as many as twenty times, losing altogether about a franc, and not once did I win.
I gave it up at last, and by this time the Professor came up and concluded to try his hand. He fared no better than I did, but kept on until he lost twice as much as I. We gave the fellow half a franc “backsheesh” for his skill, and credited him with being fitted for his business. If he lives and can find plenty of patrons, he will get rich in the course of time.
Most of the games of the Egyptians are of kinds which suit their sedate dispositions. Games partly or wholly hazardous are very common among all ranks of this people. The game of cards is almost always played for money or for some other stake, and is called by way of distinction “the game of hazard.” Persons of the lower orders in the towns of Egypt are often seen playing at this and other games at the coffee shops; but frequently for no greater stake than that of a cup of coffee. Many of them play chess, draughts, and backgammon. Their chess men are of simple forms, as they are forbidden by their religion to make an image of anything that has life.
Siout is famous for the manufacture of pipe-bowls, coffee cups, and other things out of a fine clay that abounds in the neighborhood, and most of our passengers supplied themselves in the bazaars. We had to bargain a great deal to save ourselves from being swindled, and even then we paid some pretty high prices. Another article they offered us, was fans of ostrich feathers, and their prices were about half what the same things would bring in Cairo. There are some manufactories of cotton goods at Siout, but the most of the articles sold in the bazaars come from other places.