1. The cheese used in the East is made up into small cakes, strongly salted, soft when new, but soon becoming dry and hard. It is greatly inferior to either English or Dutch cheese. Burckhardt speaks of a kind of cheese made of coagulated buttermilk, which is dried until it becomes quite hard, and is then ground. The Arabs eat it mixed with butter.
2. By the expression “take their pledge,” is probably meant, Bring some token from them that they are yet alive and well. Roberts says that among the Hindus a person in a distant country sends to those who are interested in his welfare a ring, a lock of hair, or a piece of his nail, as a “pledge” of his health and prosperity.