ABSTRACT

My dragoman is a gentleman of distinction, and I am not without fear lest he should prove too noble an attendant for a lord so insignificant as myself. It was at Alexandria, upon the deck of the steamer Leonidas, that he first appeared to me in all his glory. He had hailed the ship from a boat which he had hired, with a little black to carry his long pipe, and a younger dragoman to attend him. A long white tunic formed his outer garment and heightened the shade of his complexion: his Nubian blood gave colour to a mask that might have been borrowed from some Egyptian sphinx's head. He was, doubtless, the product of two mixed races. Broad golden rings weighed down his ears, and as he walked indolently in his long garments, he embodied for me the ideal portrait of a freedman of the Later Empire.