Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/256

 watches, and anxiously consult them. He has beaten our dinner-hour by the shortest of heads. It might have been worse, and, well content, we betake ourselves to our meal, as he to his, for he is to dine and hold a reception of his own on board, before proceeding to the Mudîr's.

So long an affair, indeed, was this reception, that it afforded ample opportunity of studying the methods of Oriental State functions, and the striking contrast which they illustrate between the East and the West. In a European country, on an occasion of this kind, "programme" would be everything. The whole course of the day's or the night's ceremonial would have been fixed beforehand to the minutest detail, and the humblest spectator in the crowd would have the means, if he cared to avail himself of them, of ascertaining how, when, and where everything was to happen. Here, not only did nobody know anything for certain about Abbas Pasha's intended movements, but nobody,