Page 484 - Travels in Arabis (Vol I)

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APPENDIX TO VOL. I.

Extracts from Letters received from Sayyid Ibn Kalfan
,
*
Secretary to the Imam of Maskat.
My dear Sir, Maskat, 26th Dec., 1835.
I am glad to hear of the attention and civility
you have met with in the dominions of His Highness;
please God you may continue to do so, and succeed in
your journey! Your letter to His Highness I have
presented this day ; and rest assured he is well pleased
at hearing you are well satisfied with his subjects.
There is a Chief at Maskat of the tribe of Majara,
who agrees for five hundred dollars to conduct you
from Bircimah to Deray’yah, furnishing you all the
way with camels, and a guard of seventy or eighty
men. I am now waiting for your answer. There is no
other way of crossing the Desert than in this manner
with a caravan. You had better, as you suggest,
take a Cashmere shawl for Fasilf. I will purchase
and send you one.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
Sayyid Ibn Kalfan.

* This gentleman, an Arab, was educated in Calcutta, and I have
given a literal transcript of his English letters.
t The Imam of the Wahhabis.