Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/284

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RETURNING TO CIVILIZATION.

receive the balance due at the end, for a portion must always be kept back till the journey is completed, lest perchance, finding that they had all their money, they might leave us on the desert. The agreement had now been fulfilled to the letter, and the grizzled soldier was well pleased as the golden napoleons dropped into his hand; while a liberal backsheesh distributed among the men, made all smiling and happy.

The missionary now led the way into his house, which, like all Eastern houses, had a central court, enclosed by a wall, within which the sound of a fountain gave a delicious sense of coolness during the heats of Summer. In the rooms all was very plain and simple, and yet there was a neatness and modest taste, that I have found in all parts of the world, to mark the missionary's home, making it a type of Christian civilization. Within is order, comfort, and intelligence, while without is poverty and filth, vice and degradation, in their most disgusting forms.

Mr. Schapira and his excellent wife kept us to dinner, after which he accompanied us to call on the Governor to make our complaint of the attempted robbery. Yusuf Effendi is one of the most enlightened statesmen in Turkey, a man of European education, speaking both French and English, He was a member of the "Parliament" which the Sultan called after the Russian war, in which he was a leader of the small party of progress and reform. Indeed he was altogether too liberal for the latitude of Constantinople, for which he received a kind of honorable banishment to the small post of Governor of Gaza. But his time may yet come. He is not a Turk, but an Arab of the purest blood, of the tribe of the Koreishites, in which Mahomet himself was born. Should there rise up in the Empire an Arab party as opposed to the Turkish, there will again be an opportunity for his great abilities. It was