Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — Baying in Cairo—The Two-Price System. [ARTICLE]

Baying in Cairo—The Two-Price System.

The first, and possibly the second, experience of this kind has in it enough that is at once novel and amusing to make it at least endurable, but when one has many purchases to make, and only a short time in which to make them, it becomes an almost intolerable vexation; for when one has found the things he wants, the business of fixing upon their price and paying for them becomes a matter not merely of hours, but sometimes of days. The dealer invariably names a price which is dofible *or treble the amount which he will accept, or which he expects you to pay. Then comes the chaffering and huckstering in which Eastern shopkeepers take such keen delight. You offer half what he asks, and he at once places the article in your hand, saying, “Take it, it is a gift,” which is simply an expressive way of telling yon that that is what your proposition would substantially amount to. Then there follows the pantomime of silent departure on the one side, and glances of reproachful entreaty on the other. You turn to go, and have reached the middle of the street, when you hear some one crying: “ Three hundred piastres!” You had been asked four hundred at first, and had offered two. Thus reluctantly, and not until your morn ing has been well-nigh consumed, the merchant comes to terms, and you secure, at an expense of some hours’ wrangling, what you could have purchased at home in ten minutes. A friend was waited upon at our hotel by an East India merchant who brought with him several parcels of handsome goods. A selection was made from them of a number of articles, and the prices of them taken down from his lips and added up in his presence. The sum total was rather large, and there is no doubt that he had not the slightest expectation of receiving it. He was offered one-third and refused it indignantly, retiring almost immediately with his parcels. I confess I thought the offer too little, and did not wonder that he refused it; but the event proved how little I was acquainted with the ways of the Eastern tradesman. The negotiation went on for nearly a week—the dealer coming and going with a patience which Was wholly unintelligible to a Western mind, but at the end of that time be did what he meant to do all along, and accepted the sum originally offered him.

There is undoubtedly much in all this that is vexatious to persons to whom it is unfamiliar, but it is somewhat hasty to pronounce it, as many do, intentionally dishonest. As I have intimated, a large element of the charm of traffic with these people is the encounter of wits for which it affords an opportunity, and in addition.to this it must not be forgottenthat, in the matter of those things especially which the traveler buys, there is not that close competition which so definitely fixes prices with us. • Curiously-carved ivory, rare patterns in rugs and scarfs, odd‘devices in brass, silver or gold have a fluctuating value according to the necessities of the dealer and the enthusiasm of the buyer. We are familiar enough at home with the same thing in connection with pictures, horses and the like, and with us no one accounts a man dishonest, because he chooses to put a “ fancy” price upon his corner house or his country glace, and then to take for either of them aif as much as he asked at the beginning. It is an amusing inconsistency with these Oriental customs of buying and selling that one sometimes meets with an ingenious method by which the trader who makes his successive abatements saves at the same time his pride. A friend who was in search of antique coins, scarabsei and the like, found in the possession of a shrewd Moslem a collection from Which about half-a-dozen articles of different value were selected. The price demanded for them was twelve pounds sterling, and the sqm offered was exactly half that amonnt. Then ensued a scene in which wrangling, shuffling-everything, in fact, short of down-right blows—formed a part. We were accompanied by afriend of the dealer’s, who acted as interpreter, and who incontinently seized the desired articles, and laying down six sovereigns started to walk off with them. At once the dealer closed with him, and the two wrestled for their possession with a

vehemence of speech and gesture which threatened a more violent contention. It was all purely dramatic. Suddenly the dealer ceaaed his struggles, placed a certain number of the coins ana scarabaei in the hand of our attendant, and said, “ These for six pounds;” and then, pausing a moment, added with a reproachftil air, as he surrendered the rest, “ Thine a present.” There is one aspect of buying and selling in Egypt wnich is not without an element of pathos, it is a country in which ev cry thing is lor sale. The rich I are so very few and the desperately jpoor are so many that it rarely happens that you see any tiling that cannot tie bought Passing a hovel you see a woman “grind, ing at a mill,” toe very same mill which is referred to in the New Testament, consisting of two stones, of. which the upper turns upon that beneath, and at which the woman sits wearily turning, as one may see represented In sculptures 8,000 years old. Unconscious of observation, she has dropped her veil, and her face Is exposed. It is a face (I am describing what I happened to see) full of intelligence, vivacity, I had almost said of refinement, and yet it is disfigured by a nose-ring suspended from one nostril, but so balanced as to seem to hang from both. On the ring, which is nearly two inches in diameter, and ot'gold, are suspended one or two little gold balls and a few coins. It is probably the whole Bum of her worldly wealth, for as you look aliout you, you perceive that her surroundings are those of utter squalor and extremest poverty. Possibly it was her dowry, and not improbably it is an hereditary treasure, the one single ornament which her mother wore, and which may have been passed on from generation to generation with increasing reverence and care; but she will sell it—or rather she must sell it; for although she refuses your offer at first, her necessities constrain her to accept it in the end, and as you felicitate yourself upon having secured an ornament at once curious and really valuable, you will be very insensible if your elation is not a little qualified by the reflection that you may have stripped another of the last relic of personal adornment as well as the last memento of ancestral prosperity. —Cairo (Egypt) Cor. j V. Y. Evening Pott.