rare cases, is in no way different from that of a solicitor. Imagination, however, Malet had none, nor initiative, nor any power of dealing on his own responsibility with occasions requiring strong action and prompt decision. He was the last man in the world to lead an intrigue or command a difficult situation. Personally he was amiable, without being attractive, and he had retained a certain boyishness of mind which in his unofficial moments was very apparent. His industry was great and his conduct irreproachable. As a quite young man this was very noticeable. He always preferred his work, however little interesting, to any form of amusement, and even when on leave would spend his spare afternoons copying despatches with us in his father's chancery rather than be at the trouble of inventing occupation for himself elsewhere. I record this because he has been credited in Egypt with an ambitious and intriguing restlessness which was the precise opposite of his very quiet character. Neither in pleasure nor in work had he the smallest spirit of adventure. Otherwise it is possible that he might have accompanied us, as I proposed to him to do, to Arabia, but he was not one to leave the beaten track, and, though I interested him as far as I could in my more romantic plan, he preferred to follow the common tourist road, and so went on after a few days to Jerusalem.
Our own journey was a very different one, and proved to be of even more interest than I had anticipated. The full detail of it has been published both in English and in French, under the title "A Pilgrimage to Nejd," and so I will deal, with it here briefly. To narrate it in a very few words: we travelled by the Haj Road as far as Mezarib and from thence to the Jebel Hauran, where one of the Druse chiefs of the Atrash family provided us with a rafyk or guide, and so passed down the Wady Sirhán by Kâf to Jôf where Mohammed el Aruk, son of the Sheykh of Tudmor, who was with us, had relations. Thence, after some stay with these, we crossed the Nefud, a hazardous passage of ten days through the great sand desert to Haïl and, though we had no letters or introductions of any kind, were received by the Emir Mohammed Ibn Rashid, the then