horses, or furniture for them, Thus there is not one of them who
does not cost above a hundred pounds a year, and many of them
above two hundred.
It is a singular circumstance, that for a series of ages a set of
men in power should never have attempted to leave their wealth
and dignity to their own offspring, in preference to a stranger, to
a slave they have bought. I t is true the beys rarely have children,
and if they have any they seldom live; both which circum-
stances are probably owing to their prostitution from early youth:
but whatever number of children a bey may leave behind him
when he dies, his hasnadar, or treasurer, who is the chief of his
domestic officers, chosen by the bey from among his mamalukes-,
and governs his whole household, marries his wife, and inherits
his dignity and fortune.
Of the arabs, who are reckoned to constitute two thirds of the
population of Egypt, there are different tribes, but they are commonly
distinguished by their mode of life into two classes; the
fellahs, who are inhabitants of the villages; and the bedoweens, or
wandering arabs, who dwell in tents. The fellahs having fixed
habitations, and a more settled intercourse with the other people
of the country, have in some measure adopted the manners of
those about them; but the bedoweens remain the same as they were
in remote ages. Roaming the deserts in quest of pasture for their
sheep and camels, they have an invincible aversion to constraint,
and consider the inhabitants of cities as buried alive. They hold
themselves the sovereigns of the barren districts over which they
wander, and think they have consequently a right to exact an