Gardens. This is considered “ very killing,” and I have
been quite of that opinion when a crowd of women
have visited my wife in our tent, with the thermometer
at 95°, and they have kindly consented to
allow me to remain as one of the party. It is hardly
necessary to add, that the operation of hair-dressing
is not often performed, but that the effect is permanent
for about a week, during which time the game becomes
so excessively lively, that the creatures require stirring
up with the long hair-pin or skewer whenever too
unruly; this appears to be constantly necessary from
the vigorous employment of the ruling sceptre during
conversation. A levee of Arab women in the tent was
therefore a disagreeable invasion, as we dreaded the
fugitives; fortunately, they appeared to cling to the
followers of Mahomet in preference to Christians.
The plague of lice brought upon the Egyptians by
Moses has certainly adhered to the country ever since,
if “ lice ” is the proper translation of the Hebrew word
in the Old Testament: it is my own opinion that the
insects thus inflicted upon the population were not
lice, but ticks. Exod. viii. 16, “ The dust became
lice through all Egypt;” again, Exod. viii. 17,
“ Smote dust. . . it became lice in man and beast.”
Now the louse that infects the human body and hair
has no connexion whatever with “ dust,” and if subject
to a few hours’ exposure to the dry heat of the burning
sand, it would shrivel and die; but the tick is ah.
inhabitant of the dust, a dry horny insect without any
apparent moisture in its composition; it lives in hot
sand and dust, where it cannot possibly obtain nourishment,
until some wretched animal should lie down
upon the spot, and become covered with these horrible
vermin. I have frequently seen dry desert places so
infested with ticks, that the ground was perfectly
alive with them, and it would have been impossible-
to have rested on the earth; in such spots, the passage
in Exodus has frequently occurred to me as bearing
reference to these vermin, which are the greatest
enemies to man. and beast. It is well known that
from the size of a grain of sand in their natural state,
they will distend to the size of a hazel nut after
having preyed for some days upon the blood of an
animal. The Arabs are invariably infested with lice,
not only in their hair, but upon their bodies and
clothes; even the small charms or spells worn upon
the arm in neatly-sewn leathern packets, are full of
these vermin. Such spells are generally verses copied
from the Koran by the Faky, or priest, who receives
some small gratuity in exchange; the men wear
several of such talismans upon the arm above the
elbow, but the women wear a large bunch of charms,
as a sort of chateleine, suspended beneath their clothes
round the waist. Although the tope or robe, loosely
but gracefully arranged around the body, appears to be
the whole of the costume, the women wear beneath
this garment1 a thin blue cotton cloth tightly bound
round the loins, which descends to a little above the
knee; beneath this, next to the skin, is the last
garment, the raMt—the latter is the only clothing of