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 to bring either drawing materials or music with them, and his best pictures were put out for them to copy; and there were musical instruments, with only one professional man to keep them all going. Some gentlemen sang, some played the flute, violin, &c. &c. Captain made an excellent copy of a Prout. There were ices and luxuries, and, when he came away, the ladies were arriving to join their husbands at dinner. In this country, where nobody can go out in the open air, there is some merit in finding a new way of passing a day in the house.

Thursday, September 8. We had such a crowd this morning, amongst others two Germans, a man and his wife, who are just come down the Euphrates, she being the first woman who has ever taken that route. They say they were travelling, and were robbed of all their papers, money, and clothes, by two highly accomplished swindlers who joined them. (‘Pauline’ still declares they were much too gentlemanlike to mean really to rob them, and she still expects to have her boxes, trinkets, &c. forwarded to her from the other side of Persia.) Colonel Chesney found them in this condition,