the way; their meals, like those of Forster and his Ghilān Seid, consisted for the most part of bread, cheese, and onions. After this frugal supper, they reposed at night in a grove of palm-trees.
Having traversed a succession of small desert plains, sprinkled with Egyptian flints, they entered a valley bounded on both sides by hills, composed entirely of oyster-shells, which rest on a bed of reddish clay. Of these shells the uppermost remain in their original state, while those which lie deeper, or are scattered over the plain, are petrified. On arriving at Tamish, the most northern village of the district, the kasheff, or governor, was met by several Arabs, who, observing him to be accompanied by a stranger, immediately began to exhibit their skill in horsemanship, and in the management of the lance. Here the quality of their fare improved. The onions were replaced by pilaus, roast lamb, fowl, soup, and sherbets; and in the morning they had for breakfast bread and butter, poached eggs, honey, cheese, and olives. Faioum, in fact, should be the land of good living. It is the Arsinoitic Nome of the ancients, which, in Strabo's opinion, was the finest spot in all Egypt; and although it no longer, perhaps, deserves this character, it still produces corn, wine, olives, vegetables,—in one word, whatever they choose to sow or plant will thrive. The olive, which requires cultivation in the gardens of Alexandria, grows spontaneously in this district. The grapes, too, are of a superior quality, and so sweet that a thick syrup made from them serves the Mohammedans instead of sugar. But Pococke soon found that even wine was not an unknown blessing in the Arsinoitic Nome; for, at a supper to which he invited the traveller, the honest kasheff got a little tipsy, threw off his gravity, and behaved as frivolously, says Pococke, as a European.
It was in this canton, according to the ancients,
