The modern people of the Nile, like the Spaniards,
delight in onions, which, as they contain between 25 and 30 per cent.
of gluten, are highly nutritive. In Arabia, however, the stranger must
use this vegetable sparingly. The city people despise it as the food of
a Fellah-a boor. The Wahhabis have a prejudice against onions, leeks,
and garlic, because the Prophet disliked their strong smell, and all
strict Moslems refuse to eat them immediately before visiting the
mosque, or meeting for public prayer.
[FN#5] A policeman; see Chap. I.
[FN#6] The stricter sort of Moslems, such as the Arabs, will not wear
gold ornaments, which are forbidden by their law.
[FN#7] See "The Gold Mines of Midian," and "The Land of Midian
(Revisited)," by Sir R. F. Burton.
[FN#8] The projecting latticed window, made of wood richly carved, for
which Cairo was once so famous. But they are growing out of fashion
with young Egypt, disappearing before heating glass and unsightly green
blinds.
[FN#9] Caste in India arises from the peculiarly sociable nature of the
native mind, for which reason "it is found existing among sects whose
creeds are as different and as opposite as those of the Hindu and the
Christian." (B. A. Irving's Prize Essay on the Theory and Practice of
Caste.) Hence, nothing can be more terrible to a man than expulsion
from caste; the excommunication of our feudal times was not a more
dreadful form of living death.
[FN#10] With us every man's house is his castle.
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