| made, as in other countries, as to whether the smoke offends:
everybody takes it for granted that everybody else smokes.
Mr. Palgrave tells us that among the Wahabites, Mohammedan
purists in Arabia, such is the heinousness of the sin of smoking, in
the view of the religious chiefs, that any man, however elevated
his position, is punished with a severe beating with rods if found
guilty of it. The king's brother, the heir apparent to the throne, was
detected in the use of tobacco, and was publicly hoisted and beaten
at his own palace gate for the offence. The Minister of Finance,
who had also indulged in the practice, was beaten so severely that
he died the next day. I wished a thousand times during that railway
ride that the Wahabites had extended their vigorous laws and prac-
tices on the subject of tobacco into Egypt before my arrival there.
On reaching Cairo I at once, armed with a note of introduction
from Rev. Dr. Schmettau, Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance
in London, and with Mr. Adam's letter, repaired to the residence
of Rev. Dr. Lansing, American Missionary at Cairo, by whom and
his associate, Mr. David Strang, I was most hospitably received.
Dr. Lansing being obliged to leave for Alexandria on the same
day of my arrival, I was left in charge of Mr. Strang, who, with
Miss Dales, teacher of the female school, made my stay in Cairo
very pleasant.
This mission, established a few years ago by the American United
Presbyterians, is doing a very important work in various needy and
populous localities in Upper and Lower Egypt. Besides having the
mission work carried on as usual in the mission churches and
schools, both boys and girls, and among the women, and at the
book depots in both Alexandria and Cairo, the members of the
mission were constrained, by the urgency of the case, to form a
mission-station at Osiut, one of the largest and most important
towns in all Upper Egypt, and afterwards at El-Medineh, one of
the most fertile and populous of all the districts in the valley of the
Nile. There is a wonderfully increasing demand for books among
the natives, and the spirit of inquiry is largely on the increase;so
that it has been thought necessary to establish in connection with
this mission a printing press to print works in the Arabic language.
VISIT TO THE PYRAMIDS
Mr. Strang kindly undertook the arrangement of all preliminaries
in the way of securing donkeys, guides, etc., to enable me to visit
the pyramids on the next day. After a hearty supper I retired early,
so as to be up betimes the next morning to enjoy a cool ride to
| | |
