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Rh covered the stone floors. The newspapers, bookcases, pictures, pianos, and little works of art or knickknacks, proclaimed that Europeans had made homes there; while on the terraces, and under the columned corridors, English flowers appeared among the native oleanders and jasmines, shaded by vine-covered trellises. But in these Europeanized houses, European servants are very rare. Almost every-where Abyssinian men-servants are sought in preference to natives, for they are intelligent, attentive, and faithful; and the hardy, but somewhat self-willed, Bethlehem women are in great request as house-servants, for they are clean and comparatively careful. I perceived that the training and management of a staff of Oriental attendants is one of the chief difficulties that European ladies have to contend with.

July 15th was a very sultry day. We all retired early to our tents, fatigued with the heat. About midnight I was aroused by the violent movement of my light tent bedstead, and a loud murmuring noise. My first thought was that an earthquake was disturbing the hills; then I fancied that some wild beast was near; and, lastly, I came to the conclusion—which proved to be the right one—that my tent was in danger of being carried away by a whirlwind. It had blown open in two places, and its yielding walls beat against the light frame-work of my bedstead.

The noise of the flapping canvas, the tightening and straining of the tent ropes, the rustling and snapping of the young trees, and the continuous rocking, kept me awake for a long while. I quite expected to be left shelterless, for I was on the highest part of the grounds.

On the morning of July 16th there was a general fixing and repairing of tents, and a search for hammers and tent pegs, for all the canvas dwellings had been more or less disturbed by the wild wind of the preceding night. At sunrise, the air was soft and warm, but clouds were being driven from the north in large masses, burnished by the morning sun. A south-west wind had driven those clouds