pages: latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf, 227
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latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf | 227 | THE USE OF THE WAND 211 His skill in sleight-of-hand, which he had in the first instance taken up merely as a pastime, proved to be of immense service to him in his desert wan- derings; adding not only to his popularity but fre- quently gaining for him the prestige of a genuine magician, and thereby increasing his influence. In 1871 he was appointed to the professorship of Oriental languages at Cambridge, his official title being the Lord High Almoner's Reader of Arabic. In 1882, in anticipation of the Arabi trouble in Egypt, he was entrusted by the then Government with the difficult and dangerous task of winning over the Sinaitic tribes, and preventing the threat- ened destruction of the Suez Canal. His first trip, extending from Gaza to Suez, was carried out successfully, but on penetrating farther into the desert, he and his two companions, Captain Gill, R.E., and Lieutenant Charrington, R.N., fell into the hands of a tribe to whom Palmer was unknown, and were barbarously put to death. Happily, their bodies were recovered, and received from the nation the posthumous honour of burial in St. Paul's Cathedral. The wand presented to me by Professor Palmer is a curiosity in many ways. It is made of acacia wood (the "shittim" wood of the Old Testament) brought by Palmer himself from Mount Lebanon. Around it, in spiral form, is inscribed an invoca- tion from the Koran, in Arabic characters. The writing of the inscription is a genuine work of art, |