One meets few travellers in Egypt who do not speak of the incessant demands for backsheesh as an annoyance, and a nuisance. The word has become as irritating to their temper as a mosquito-bite is to their skin; and it is quite as inevitable. You engage a boat, a porter, a donkey: in each case you pay two, or three times as much as you ought; and in each case the hand that has received your overpayment is again instantly held out for backsheesh. While on the Nile I gave one morning a cigar to the reis of the boat. On walking away I heard his step behind me. I turned back, and found that he was following me to ask for backsheesh. I suppose what passed in his mind was, either that I had discovered in him some merit that entitled him to backsheesh, or that one who was rich enough, and weak enough, to give a cigar, without any provocation, would give even money to one who asked for it. A friend of mine rode over a little boy. The urchin, as he lay upon the ground writhing with pain, and incapable of rising, held up his hand, crying out, “I die now, give backsheesh!” An English surgeon sees a man fall, and break his arm. He goes to his assistance, and sets the broken limb. The man asks for backsheesh. If the wayfarer who, as he was journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho, had fallen among thieves, had been an Egyptian, he would, while the good Samaritan was taking leave of him, have addressed to him the same request. An Arab helps you up to the top of the Pyramid. You pay him handsomely, and he is satisfied. You enter into conversation with him, and he tells you that he is the Hakem of his village; that he possesses so many sheep, so many goats, so many asses, so many camels; that the wife he married last, now two years ago, is thirteen years old. You look upon him as a rich man, but, while the thought is forming itself in your mind, he holds out his hand, and asks for backsheesh.

There is, however, nothing in such requests that need cause annoyance, or irritation. These children—whether, or not, grown up, for they never arrive at mental manhood—have nothing in their minds corresponding to our ideas of pride, whether aristocratic, or republican, of a kind that might dispose them to regard such petitions as humiliating. What pride they have is that of race and of religion, which suggests to them the thought that to get money in this way is only a justifiable spoiling of the unbelieving stranger. They look, too, upon you as quite inexhaustibly rich, while they are themselves, generally, very poor. And if you are satisfied with their services—and they certainly always endeavour to do their best; or if you have any good-will towards them, with which they credit you; how is this satisfaction, or good-will, to be shown? It is ridiculous to suppose that words will suffice. There is but one thing to do, that is to give a little backsheesh. This rational way of settling the matter is the way of the East. And of old, too, we know that “the little present” figured largely in the manners and customs of that part of the world.

In Egypt, then, to blaze up with indignation at the sight of a hand held out towards you, is to misunderstand the people you are among. Moreover, indignation, whatever may be the prompting cause, is very un-Egyptian. I never met with one who had seen a native lose his temper, under any circumstances, or under any amount of provocation. You may abuse him; you may even beat him; but he still smiles, and is still ready to serve you. In this way he soon makes you feel that you are in the wrong. One cannot be angry with such people.

This ever-present idea of backsheesh may be turned to some account. I found that the only way in which I could extract a smile, or a word, from the native women was to hold out my hand to them, and ask for backsheesh. That the Howaji, as he rode by, should turn the tables on them in this way, and invert the natural order of things, by constituting himself the petitioner, and elevating them to the position of the dispensers of fortune, was enough to upset their gravity, and loosen their tongues.

I had gone from Jerusalem to Bethany with a young friend late from Harrow, great in athletics, and full of fun and good spirits. We were on foot—for who would care to go to, or return from, Bethany otherwise? and, having arrived at the village, were inquiring for what is shown as the tomb of Lazarus. The women of the place soon collected round us. One of them, in the first bloom of youth, looked like a visitant to Earth, come to enable hapless mortals to dream of the perfectness of Paradise. Her figure would have given Praxiteles new ideas. Her face was slightly oval; her features fine and regular; and her complexion such as must be rare in an Arab girl, for her lips were of a rich, if of a dusky, coral, and the rose envermeiled her nut-brown cheeks. Her eyes thought. Her beauty was about her as a halo of light. To look upon her was fascination. My admiration was speechless. Not so, however, my young friend’s; for, turning to our dragoman, he said, ‘Ask that young lady if she is married?’ My breath went from me at the sudden indignation with which she fired up.

As she walked away, giving utterance, as she went, to some angry Arabic, I looked into the faces of the women about us. It was evident that they were impressed with, and approved of, the propriety of her conduct. It will, I thought, be long remembered, and quoted, in the village as an example of the promptitude, and decision, with which an Arab girl should guard her reputation.

And now, I said to myself, we are in for it. She will go and fetch her father, or a brother, or some relative assumed for the occasion, and there will be a row. I suggested, therefore, to my young friend, ‘that the tomb was a transparent imposture; that it could only be an excavation in the rock, made by some mediæval monk; and that we should do better to go on, and look at something else.’ And so we got away.

As we left the party of women, I gave them a little more backsheesh than usual; and then told the dragoman that we would leave the place at once, but not by the road by which we had come.

We had just cleared the village, and I was congratulating myself on our having got off so speedily, when we encountered a flight of locusts. I soon became absorbed in observing their ‘numbers numberless.’ They gave me, I thought, a new idea of multitude. They blurred the sunlight almost like a cloud. I began to capture some of them, which I now have preserved in spirits.

While thus occupied, and with a feeling of wonder, at the infinitude of living things around us, growing upon me, the apprehensions I had lately felt, dropped entirely out of my mind. In this way we went on. When we had got about three-quarters of a mile from the village we came to a turn in the mountain path, far removed from any dwelling, and where all was solitude and quiet. As we approached the corner, a young woman stepped forward from behind a projecting rock, and with a gracious look, and most engaging smile, presented my young friend with a carefully-arranged and beautiful bouquet.

Could my eyes be deceiving me? No. It was no other than the exemplary young creature, who, only half-an-hour back, had shown so much and such becoming indignation.

My apprehensions, then, and precautions had been unnecessary. But, in American phrase, ‘How dreffle smart’ to combine, in so prompt and graceful a manner, the credit of being good with the pleasure of being good-natured. Could anything have been better imagined in London, or Paris?

So it seemed. But honi soit qui mal y pense. True, few can be as beautiful, few as keen-witted as the girl of Bethany. But also true that none could have been more free from thought of evil. ’Twas all for backsheesh.

And where two rupees are a marriage portion—so much to them, and so little to us—whose heart would condemn the bare-footed young tactician?

That day, as she returned to the village, her step, I can think, was lighter than usual. Perhaps she did not observe the mischief the locusts were doing to her father’s little plot of wheat.

A few days afterwards, we were riding across the hills from Bethlehem to Solomon’s Pools. Our path lay by the side of the rude old aqueduct. This is merely a trough of undressed stone, sunk to the level of the surface of the ground, on the sides of the hills it winds its way among, for about five miles, from the Pools to the town. The sinking of the aqueduct just to the level of the surface, was a way of saving it from the risks of being knocked over, or of falling to pieces, that was as wise as it was simple. If it had been raised above the ground, or buried in it, whenever it got out of order, the repair of damages would have been difficult and costly. Originally it was carried on, five miles further, to Jerusalem. We had, in our ride, reached the spot where the large-hearted king (who, like Aristotle, Bacon, and Humboldt, had seen that all knowledge was connected) had, probably, his Botanical Gardens, in which he cultivated some of the plants he wrote about; and the genius loci had just brought into my mind, his request, suggested to him, perhaps, by the interest he took in the fruit he was growing up here, ‘To be comforted with apples, for that he was sick of love,’ when we came suddenly on a party of women washing clothes. If the daughters of Bethlehem were as good-looking in Solomon’s time as they are in ours, it, we can imagine, must have strengthened his favourable disposition towards the place; and may go some way towards accounting for the aqueduct. Though, indeed, this seems a little inconsistent with his preference for apples. That, however, may have been only a temporary feeling, or, it may have been the expression of his latest and more matured experience.

But, as to those daughters of Bethlehem now in the flesh, whom we had come upon, while so usefully and creditably employed. They were much amused, as it appeared, at having been caught in such an occupation, and were laughing merrily. My young friend, as might have been expected of him, endeavoured to increase the merriment; this he did by leaning over his saddle, and saying, ‘Ateeni bosa.’ Had he spoken in English—though, of course, nothing of the kind could ever have been said by him in our downright tongue—the words would have been ‘Give me a kiss.’ The one, to whom he appeared more particularly to address himself, blazed up with instantaneous indignation, just like the girl of Bethany. With angry glance, and fierce tone, she exclaimed, ‘May your lips be withered first.’ But now I felt no apprehensions. My only thought was, that if we came back the same way, and should, by accident, find her alone, she would then, perhaps, hold out her hand, and say, ‘Your lips are a garden of roses: give backsheesh.’