Mustapha Aga, the consular agent at Thebes, has offered me a house of his, up among the tombs in the finest air, if ever I want it. He was very kind and hospitable indeed to all the English there. I went into his hareem, and liked his wife's manners very much. It was charming to see that she henpecked her handsome old husband completely. They had fine children and his boy, about thirteen or so, rode and played Jereed one day when Abdallah Pasha had ordered the people of the neighbourhood to do it for General Parker. I never saw so beautiful a performance. The old General and I were quite excited, and he tried it to the great amusement of the Sheykh el Beled. Some young Englishmen were rather grand about it, but declined mounting the horses and trying a throw. The Sheykh and young Hassan and then old Mustapha wheeled round and round like beautiful hawks, and caught the palm-sticks thrown at them as they dashed round. It was superb, and the horses were good, though the saddles and bridles were rags and ends of rope, and the men mere tatterdemalions. A little below Thebes I stopped, and walked inland to Koos to see a noble old mosque falling to ruin. No English had ever been there and we were surrounded by a crowd in the bazaar. Instantly five or six tall fellows with long sticks improvised themselves our body-guard and kept the people off, who du reste were perfectly civil and only curious to see such strange 'Hareem,' and after seeing us well out of the town evaporated as quietly as they came without a word. I gave about ten-pence to buy oil, as it is Ramadan and the mosque ought to be lighted, and the old servant of the mosque kindly promised me full justice at the Day of Judgment, as I was one of those Nasranee of whom the Lord Mohammed said that they are not proud and wish well to the Muslimeen. The Pasha had confiscated all the lands belonging to the mosque, and allowed 300 piastres—not 2 pounds a month—for all expenses; of course the noble old building with its beautiful carving and arabesque mouldings must fall down. There was a smaller one beside it, where he declared that anciently forty girls lived unmarried and recited the Koran—Muslim nuns, in fact. I intend to ask the Alim, for whom I have a letter from Mustapha, about such an anomaly.

Some way above Bellianeh Omar asked eagerly leave to stop the boat as a great Sheyk had called to us, and we should inevitably have some disaster if we disobeyed. So we stopped and Omar said, 'come and see the Sheyk, ma'am.' I walked off and presently found about thirty people, including all my own men, sitting on the ground round St. Simon Stylites—without the column. A hideous old man like Polyphemus, utterly naked, with the skin of a rhinoceros all cracked with the weather, sat there, and had sat day and night, summer and winter, motionless for twenty years. He never prays, he never washes, he does not keep Ramadan, and yet he is a saint. Of course I expected a good hearty curse from such a man, but he was delighted with my visit, asked me to sit down, ordered his servant to bring me sugar-cane, asked my name and tried to repeat it over and over again, and was quite talkative and full of jokes and compliments, and took no notice of anyone else. Omar and my crew smiled and nodded, and all congratulated me heartily. Such a distinction proves my own excellence (as the Sheyk knows all people's thoughts), and is sure to be followed by good fortune. Finally Omar proposed to say the Fathah in which all joined except the Sheykh, who looked rather bored by the interruption, and desired us not to go so soon, unless I were in a hurry. A party of Bedaween came up on camels with presents for the holy man, but he took no notice of them, and went on questioning Omar about me, and answering my questions. What struck me was the total absence of any sanctimonious air about the old fellow, he was quite worldly and jocose; I suppose he knew that his position was secure, and thought his dirt and nakedness proved his holiness enough. Omar then recited the Fathah again, and we rose and gave the servants a few foddahs—the saint takes no notice of this part of the proceeding—but he asked me to send him twice my hand full of rice for his dinner, an honour so great that there was a murmur of congratulation through the whole assembly. I asked Omar how a man could be a saint who neglected all the duties of a Muslim, and I found that he fully believed that Sheykh Seleem could be in two places at once, that while he sits there on the shore he is also at Mecca, performing every sacred function and dressed all in green. 'Many people have seen him there, ma'am, quite true.'

From Bellianeh we rode on pack-donkeys without bridles to Abydos, six miles through the most beautiful crops ever seen. The absence of weeds and blight is wonderful, and the green of Egypt, where it is green, would make English green look black. Beautiful cattle, sheep and camels were eating the delicious clover, while their owners camped there in reed huts during the time the crops are growing. Such a lovely scene, all sweetness and plenty. We ate our bread and dates in Osiris' temple, and a woman offered us buffalo milk on our way home, which we drank warm out of the huge earthen pan it had been milked in. At Girgeh I found my former friend Mishregi absent, but his servants told some of his friends of my arrival, and about seven or eight big black turbans soon gathered in the boat. A darling little Coptic boy came with his father and wanted a 'kitaab' (book) to write in, so I made one with paper and the cover of my old pocket-book, and gave him a pencil. I also bethought me of showing him 'pickys' in a book, which was so glorious a novelty that he wanted to go with me to my town, 'Beled Ingleez,' where more such books were to be found.

SIOUT, March 9.

I found here letters from Alick, telling me of dear Lord Lansdowne's death. Of course I know that his time was come, but the thought that I shall never see his face again, that all that kindness and affection is gone out of my life, is a great blow. No friend could leave such a blank to me as that old and faithful one, though the death of younger ones might be more tragic; but so many things seem gone with him into the grave. Many indeed will mourn that kind, wise, steadfast man—Antiqua fides. No one nowadays will be so noble with such unconsciousness and simplicity. I have bought two Coptic turbans to make a black dress out of. I thought I should like to wear it for him—here, where 'compliment' is out of the question.

I also found a letter from Janet, who has been very ill; the account was so bad that I have telegraphed to hear how she is, and shall go at once to Alexandria if she is not better. If she is I shall hold to my plan and see Beni Hassan and the Pyramids on my way to Cairo. I found my kind friend the Copt Wassef kinder than ever. He went off to telegraph to Alexandria for me, and showed so much feeling and real kindness that I was quite touched.

I was grieved to hear that you had been ill again, dearest Mutter. The best is that I feel so much better that I think I may come home again without fear; I still have an irritable cough, but it has begun to have lucid intervals, and is far less frequent. I can walk four or five miles and my appetite is good. All this in spite of really cold weather in a boat where nothing shuts within two fingers' breadths. I long to be again with my own people.

Please send this to Alick, to whom I will write again from Cairo.



March 10, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

March 10, 1863.

'If in the street I led thee, dearest, Though the veil hid thy face divine, They who beheld thy graceful motion Would stagger as though drunk with wine.

Nay, e'en the holy Sheykh, while praying For guidance in the narrow way, Must needs leave off, and on the traces Of thine enchanting footsteps stray.

O ye who go down in the boats to Dumyat, Cross, I beseech ye, the stream to Budallah; Seek my beloved, and beg that she will not Forget me, I pray and implore her by Allah.

'Fair as two moons is the face of my sweetheart, And as to her neck and her bosom—Mashallah. And unless to my love I am soon reunited Death is my portion—I swear it by Allah.'

Thus sings Ali Asleemee, the most debraille of my crew, a hashshash, {48} but a singer and a good fellow. The translation is not free, though the sentiments are. I merely rhymed Omar's literal word-for-word interpretation. The songs are all in a similar strain, except one funny one abusing the 'Sheykh el-Beled, may the fleas bite him.' Horrid imprecation! as I know to my cost, for after visiting the Coptic monks at Girgeh I came home to the boat with myriads. Sally said she felt like Rameses the Great, so tremendous was the slaughter of the active enemy.

I had written the first page just as I got to Siout and was stopped by bad news of Janet; but now all is right again, and I am to meet her in Cairo, and she proposes a jaunt to Suez and to Damietta. I have got a superb illumination to-night, improvised by Omar in honour of the Prince of Wales's marriage, and consequently am writing with flaring candles, my lantern being on duty at the masthead, and the men are singing an epithalamium and beating the tarabookeh as loud as they can.

You will have seen my letter to my mother, and heard how much better I am for the glorious air of Nubia and the high up-country. Already we are returning into misty weather. I dined and spent the day with Wassef and his Hareem, such an amiable, kindly household. I was charmed with their manner to each other, to the slaves and family. The slaves (all Muslims) told Omar what an excellent master they had. He had meant to make a dance-fantasia, but as I had not good news it was countermanded. Poor Wassef ate his boiled beans rather ruefully, while his wife and I had an excellent dinner, she being excused fasting on account of a coming baby. The Copt fast is no joke, neither butter, milk, eggs nor fish being allowed for fifty-five days. They made Sally dine with us, and Omar was admitted to wait and interpret. Wassef's younger brother waited on him as in the Bible, and his clerk, a nice young fellow, assisted. Black slaves brought the dishes in, and capital the food was. There was plenty of joking between the lady and Omar about Ramadan, which he had broken, and the Nasranee fast, and also about the number of wives allowed, the young clerk intimating that he rather liked that point in Islam. I have promised to spend ten or twelve days at their house if ever I go up the Nile again. I have also promised to send Wassef all particulars as to the expense, etc. of educating his boy in England, and to look after him and have him to our house in the holidays. I can't describe how anxiously kind these people were to me. One gets such a wonderful amount of sympathy and real hearty kindness here. A curious instance of the affinity of the British mind for prejudice is the way in which every Englishman I have seen scorns the Eastern Christians, and droll enough that sinners like Kinglake and I should be the only people to feel the tie of the 'common faith' (vide 'Eothen'). A very pious Scotch gentleman wondered that I could think of entering a Copt's house, adding that they were the publicans (tax-gatherers) of this country, which is partly true. I felt inclined to mention that better company than he or I had dined with publicans, and even sinners.

The Copts are evidently the ancient Egyptians. The slightly aquiline nose and long eye are the very same as the profiles of the tombs and temples, and also like the very earliest Byzantine pictures; du reste, the face is handsome, but generally sallow and rather inclined to puffiness, and the figure wants the grace of the Arabs. Nor has any Copt the thoroughbred, distingue look of the meanest man or woman of good Arab blood. Their feet are the long-toed, flattish foot of the Egyptian statue, while the Arab foot is classically perfect and you could put your hand under the instep. The beauty of the Ababdeh, black, naked, and shaggy-haired, is quite marvellous. I never saw such delicate limbs and features, or such eyes and teeth.

CAIRO, March 19.

After leaving Siout I caught cold. The worst of going up the Nile is that one must come down again and find horrid fogs, and cold nights with sultry days. So I did not attempt Sakhara and the Pyramids, but came a day before my appointed time to Cairo. Up here in the town it is much warmer and dryer, and my cough is better already. I found all your letters in many volumes, and was so excited over reading them that I could not sleep one moment last night, so excuse dulness, but I thought you'd like to know I was safe in Briggs' bank, and expecting Janet and Ross to-night.



April 9, 1863: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

CAIRO, April 9, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I write to you because I know Janet is sure to write to Alick. I have had a very severe attack of bronchitis. As I seemed to be getting worse after Janet and Ross left for Alexandria, Omar very wisely sent for Hekekian Bey, who came at once bringing De Leo Bey, the surgeon-in-chief of the Pasha's troops, and also the doctor to the hareem. He has been most kind, coming two and three times a day at first. He won't take any fee, sous pretexte that he is officier du Pasha; I must send him a present from England. As to Hekekian Bey, he is absolutely the Good Samaritan, and these Orientals do their kindnesses with such an air of enjoyment to themselves that it seems quite a favour to let them wait upon one. Hekekian comes in every day with his handsome old face and a budget of news, all the gossip of the Sultan and his doings. I shall always fancy the Good Samaritan in a tarboosh with a white beard and very long eyes. I am out of bed to-day for the second time, and waiting for a warm day to go out. Sally saw the illuminations last night; the Turkish bazaar she says was gorgeous. The Sultan and all his suite have not eaten bread here, all their food comes from Constantinople. To-morrow the Mahmaal goes—think of my missing that sight! C'est desclant.

I have a black slave—a real one. I looked at her little ears wondering they had not been bored for rings. She fancied I wished them bored (she was sitting on the floor close at my side), and in a minute she stood up and showed me her ear with a great pin through it: 'Is that well, lady?' the creature is eight years old. The shock nearly made me faint. What extremities of terror had reduced that little mind to such a state. She is very good and gentle, and sews quite nicely already. When she first came, she tells me, she thought I should eat her; now her one dread is that I should leave her behind. She sings a wild song of joy to Maurice's picture and about the little Sitt. She was sent from Khartoum as a present to Mr. Thayer, who has no woman-servant at all. He fetched me to look at her, and when I saw the terror-stricken creature being coarsely pulled about by his cook and groom, I said I would take her for the present. Sally teaches her, and she is very good; but now she has set her whole little black soul upon me. De Leo can give no opinion as to what I ought to do, as he knows little but Egypt, and thinks England rather like Norway, I fancy. Only don't let me be put in a dreadful mountain valley; I hear the drip, drip, drip of Eaux Bonnes in bad dreams still, when I am chilly and oppressed in my sleep. I'll write again soon, send this to Alick, please.



April 13, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, April 13, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

You will have heard from my mother of my ill luck, falling sick again. The fact is that the spring in Egypt is very trying, and I came down the river a full month too soon. People do tell such lies about the heat. To-day is the first warm day we have had; till now I have been shivering, and Sally too. I have been out twice, and saw the holy Mahmaal rest for its first station outside the town, it is a deeply affecting sight—all those men prepared to endure such hardship. They halt among the tombs of the Khalifah, such a spot. Omar's eyes were full of tears and his voice shaking with emotion, as he talked about it and pointed out the Mahmaal and the Sheykh al-Gemel, who leads the sacred camel, naked to the waist with flowing hair. Muslim piety is so unlike what Europeans think it is, so full of tender emotions, so much more sentimental than we imagine—and it is wonderfully strong. I used to hear Omar praying outside my door while I was so ill, 'O God, make her better. O my God, let her sleep,' as naturally as we should say, 'I hope she'll have a good night.'

The Sultan's coming is a kind of riddle. No one knows what he wants. The Pasha has ordered all the women of the lower classes to keep indoors while he is here. Arab women are outspoken, and might shout out their grievances to the great Sultan.

April 15.—I continue to get better slowly, and in a few days will go down to Alexandria. Omar is gone to Boulak to inquire the cost of a boat, as I am not fond of the railroad, and have a good deal of heavy baggage, cooking utensils, etc., which the railway charges enormously for. The black slave girl, sent as a present to the American Consul-General, is as happy as possible, and sings quaint, soft little Kordofan songs all day. I hope you won't object to my bringing her home. She wails so terribly when Omar tells her she is not my slave, for fear I should leave her, and insists on being my slave. She wants to be a present to Rainie, the little Sitt, and laughs out so heartily at the thought of her. She is very quiet and gentle, poor little savage, and the utter slavishness of the poor little soul quite upsets me; she has no will of her own. Now she has taken to talking, and tells all her woes and how batal (bad) everyone was at Khartoum; and then she rubs her little black nose on my hand, and laughs so merrily, and says all is quyis keteer (very good) here, and she hugs herself with delight. I think Rainie will like her very much.

I am going to visit an old Muslim French painter's family. He has an Arab wife and grown-up daughters, and is a very agreeable old man with a store of Arab legends; I am going to persuade him to write them and let me translate them into English. The Sultan goes away to-day. Even water to drink has been brought from Constantinople; I heard that from Hekekian Bey, who formerly owned the eunuch who is now Kislar Aghasy to the Sultan himself. Hekekian had the honour of kissing his old slave's hand. If anyone tries to make you believe any bosh about civilization in Egypt, laugh at it. The real life and the real people are exactly as described in the most veracious of books, the 'Thousand and One Nights'; the tyranny is the same, the people are not altered—and very charming people they are. If I could but speak the language I could get into Arab society here through two or three different people, and see more than many Europeans who have lived here all their lives. The Arabs are keenly alive to the least prejudice against them, but when they feel quite safe on that point they rather like the amusement of a stranger.

Omar devised a glorious scheme, if I were only well and strong, of putting me in a takterrawan and taking me to Mecca in the character of his mother, supposed to be a Turk. To a European man, of course, it would be impossible, but an enterprising woman might do it easily with a Muslim confederate. Fancy seeing the pilgrimage! In a few days I shall go down to Alexandria, if it makes me ill again I must return to Europe or go to Beyrout. I can't get a boat under 12 pounds; thus do the Arabs understand competition; the owner of boats said so few were wanted, times were bad on account of the railway, etc., he must have double what he used to charge. In vain Omar argued that that was not the way to get employment. 'Maleesh!' (Never mind!), and so I must go by rail. Is not that Eastern? Up the river, where there is no railroad, I might have had it at half that rate. All you have ever told me as most Spanish in Spain is in full vigour here, and also I am reminded of Ireland at every turn; the same causes produce the same effects.

To-day the Khamseen is blowing and it is decidedly hot, quite unlike the heat at the Cape; this is close and gloomy, no sunshine. Altogether the climate is far less bright than I expected, very, very inferior to the Cape. Nevertheless, I heartily agree to the Arab saying: 'He who has drunk Nile water will ever long to drink it again'; and when a graceful woman in a blue shirt and veil lifts a huge jar from her shoulder and holds it to your lips with a hearty smile and welcome, it tastes doubly sweet. Alhamdulillah! Sally says all other water is like bad small-beer compared to sweet ale after the Nile water. When the Khamseen is over, Omar insists on my going to see the tree and the well where Sittina Mariam rested with Seyidna Issa {55} in her arms during the flight into Egypt. It is venerated by Christian and Muslim alike, and is a great place for feasting and holiday-making out of doors, which the Arabs so dearly love. Do write and tell me what you wish me to do. If it were not that I cannot endure not to see you and the children, I would stay here and take a house at the Abbassieh in the desert; but I could not endure it. Nor can I endure this wandering life much longer. I must come home and die in peace if I don't get really better. Write to Alexandria next.



April 18, 1863: Mr. Tom Taylor

To Mr. Tom Taylor.

CAIRO, April 18, 1863.

MY DEAR TOM,

Your letter and Laura's were a great pleasure to me in this distant land. I could not answer before, as I have been very ill. But Samaritans came with oil and wine and comforted me. It had an odd, dreary effect to hear my friend Hekekian Bey, a learned old Armenian, and De Leo Bey, my doctor, discoursing Turkish at my bedside, while my faithful Omar cried and prayed Yah Robbeena! Yah Saatir! (O Lord! O Preserver!) 'don't let her die.'

Alick is quite right that I am in love with the Arabs' ways, and I have contrived to see and know more of family life than many Europeans who have lived here for years. When the Arabs feel that one really cares for them, they heartily return it. If I could only speak the language I could see anything. Cairo is the Arabian Nights; there is a little Frankish varnish here and there, but the government, the people—all is unchanged since that most veracious book was written. No words can describe the departure of the holy Mahmal and the pilgrims for Mecca. I spent half the day loitering about in the Bedaween tents admiring the glorious, free people. To see a Bedaween and his wife walk through the streets of Cairo is superb. Her hand resting on his shoulder, and scarcely deigning to cover her haughty face, she looks down on the Egyptian veiled woman who carries the heavy burden and walks behind her lord and master.

By no deed of my own have I become a slave-owner. The American Consul-General turned over to me a black girl of eight or nine, and in consequence of her reports the poor little black boy who is the slave and marmiton of the cook here has been entreating Omar to beg me to buy him and take him with me. It is touching to see the two poor little black things recounting their woes and comparing notes. I went yesterday to deposit my cooking things and boat furniture at my washerwoman's house. Seeing me arrive on my donkey, followed by a cargo of household goods, about eight or ten Arab women thronged round delighted at the idea that I was coming to live in their quarter, and offering me neighbourly services. Of course all rushed upstairs, and my old washerwoman was put to great expense in pipes and coffee. I think, as you, that I must have the 'black drop,' and that the Arabs see it, for I am always told that I am like them, with praises of my former good looks. 'You were beautiful Hareem once.' Nothing is more striking to me than the way in which one is constantly reminded of Herodotus. The Christianity and the Islam of this country are full of the ancient worship, and the sacred animals have all taken service with Muslim saints. At Minieh one reigns over crocodiles; higher up I saw the hole of AEsculapius' serpent at Gebel Sheykh Hereedee, and I fed the birds—as did Herodotus—who used to tear the cordage of boats which refused to feed them, and who are now the servants of Sheykh Naooneh, and still come on board by scores for the bread which no Reis dares refuse them. Bubastis' cats are still fed in the Cadi's court at public expense in Cairo, and behave with singular decorum when 'the servant of the cats' serves them their dinner. Among gods, Amun Ra, the sun-god and serpent-killer, calls himself Mar Girgis (St. George), and is worshipped by Christians and Muslims in the same churches, and Osiris holds his festivals as riotously as ever at Tanta in the Delta, under the name of Seyd el Bedawee. The fellah women offer sacrifices to the Nile, and walk round ancient statues in order to have children. The ceremonies at births and burials are not Muslim, but ancient Egyptian.

The Copts are far more close and reserved and backward than the Arabs, and they have been so repudiated by Europeans that they are doubly shy of us. The Europeans resent being called 'Nazranee' as a genteel Hebrew gentleman may shrink from 'Jew.' But I said boldly, 'Ana Nazraneeh. Alhamdulillah!' (I am a Nazranee. Praise be to God), and found that it was much approved by the Muslims as well as the Copts. Curious things are to be seen here in religion—Muslims praying at the tomb of Mar Girgis (St. George) and the resting-places of Sittina Mariam and Seyidna Issa, and miracles, brand-new, of an equally mixed description.

If you have any power over any artists, send them to paint here. No words can describe either the picturesque beauty of Cairo or the splendid forms of the people in Upper Egypt, and above all in Nubia. I was in raptures at seeing how superb an animal man (and woman) really is. My donkey-girl at Thebes, dressed like a Greek statue—Ward es-Sham (the Rose of Syria)—was a feast to the eyes; and here, too, what grace and sweetness, and how good is a drink of Nile water out of an amphora held to your lips by a woman as graceful as she is kindly. 'May it benefit thee,' she says, smiling with all her beautiful teeth and eyes. 'Alhamdulillah,' you reply; and it is worth thanking God for. The days of the beauty of Cairo are numbered. The mosques are falling to decay, the exquisite lattice windows rotting away and replaced by European glass and jalousies. Only the people and the Government remain unchanged. Read all the pretty paragraphs about civilisation here, and then say, Bosh!

If you know anyone coming here and wanting a good servant and dragoman, recommend my dear Omar Abou el-Halaweh of Alexandria. He has been my friend and companion, as well as my cook and general servant, now for six months, and we are very sad at our approaching separation. I am to spend a day in his house with his young wife at Alexandria, and to eat his bread. He sadly wants to go with me to Europe and to see my children. Sally, I think, is almost as fond of the Arabs as I am, and very popular. My poor ragged crew were for ever calling out 'Yah Sara' for some assistance or other, hurt fingers or such calamities; and the quantity of doctoring I did was fearful. Sally was constantly wishing for you to see all manner of things and to sketch. What a yarn I have made!



May 12, 1863: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

ALEXANDRIA, May 12, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have been here a fortnight, but the climate disagrees so much with me that I am going back to Cairo at once by the advice of the doctor of the Suez Canal. I cannot shake off my cough here. Mr. Thayer kindly lends me his nice little bachelor house, and I take Omar back again for the job. It is very hot here, but with a sea-breeze which strikes me like ice; strong people enjoy it, but it gives even Janet cold in the head. She is very well, I think, and seems very happy. She is Times correspondent and does it very well.

I am terribly disappointed at not being as materially better as I had hoped I should be while in Upper Egypt. I cannot express the longing I have for home and my children, and how much I feel the sort of suspense it all causes to you and to Alick, and my desire to be with you.

One must come to the East to understand absolute equality. As there is no education and no reason why the donkey-boy who runs behind me may not become a great man, and as all Muslims are ipso facto equal; money and rank are looked on as mere accidents, and my savoir vivre was highly thought of because I sat down with Fellaheen and treated everyone as they treat each other. In Alexandria all that is changed. The European ideas and customs have extinguished the Arab altogether, and those who remain are not improved by the contact. Only the Bedaween preserve their haughty nonchalance. I found the Mograbee bazaar full of them when I went to buy a white cloak, and was amused at the way in which one splendid bronze figure, who lay on the shop-front, moved one leg to let me sit down. They got interested in my purchase, and assisted in making the bargain and wrapping the cloak round me Bedawee fashion, and they too complimented me on having 'the face of the Arab,' which means Bedaween. I wanted a little Arab dress for Rainie, but could not find one, as at her age none are worn in the desert.

I dined one day with Omar, or rather I ate at his house, for he would not eat with me. His sister-in-law cooked a most admirable dinner, and everyone was delighted. It was an interesting family circle. A very respectable elder brother a confectioner, whose elder wife was a black woman, a really remarkable person, who speaks Italian perfectly, and gave me a great deal of information and asked such intelligent questions. She ruled the house but had no children, so he had married a fair, gentle-looking Arab woman who had six children, and all lived in perfect harmony. Omar's wife is a tall, handsome girl of his own age, with very good manners. She had been outside the door of the close little court which constituted the house once since her marriage. I now begin to understand all about the wesen with the women. There is a good deal of chivalry in some respects, and in the respectable lower and middle classes the result is not so bad. I suspect that among the rich few are very happy. But I don't know them, or anything of the Turkish ways. I will go and see the black woman again and hear more, her conversation was really interesting.



May 12, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ALEXANDRIA, May 12, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I only got your letter an hour ago, and the mail goes out at four. I enclose to you the letter I had written to my mother, so I need not repeat about my plans. Continue to write here, a letter comes as soon and safer. My general health is so much stronger and better—especially before I had this last severe attack—that I still hope, though it is a severe trial of patience not to throw it up and come home for good. It would be delightful to have you at Cairo now I have pots and pans and all needful for a house, but a carpet and a few mattresses, if you could camp with me a l'Arabe.

How you would revel in old Masr el-Kahira, peep up at lattice windows, gape like a gasheem (green one) in the bazaar, go wild over the mosques, laugh at portly Turks and dignified Sheykhs on their white donkeys, drink sherbet in the streets, ride wildly about on a donkey, peer under black veils at beautiful eyes and feel generally intoxicated! I am quite a good cicerone now of the glorious old city. Omar is in raptures at the idea that the Sidi el Kebir (the Great Master) might come, and still more if he brought the 'little master.' He plans meeting you on the steamboat and bringing you to me, that I may kiss your hand first of all. Mashallah! How our hearts would be dilated!



May 21, 1863: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

MASR EL-KAHIRA, CAIRO, May 21, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I came here on Saturday night. To-day is Wednesday, and I am already much better. I have attached an excellent donkey and his master, a delightful youth called Hassan, to my household for fifteen piastres (under two shillings) a day. They live at the door, and Hassan cleans the stairs and goes errands during the heat of the day, and I ride out very early, at six or seven, and again at five. The air is delicious now. It is very hot for a few hours, but not stifling, and the breeze does not chill one as it does at Alexandria. I live all day and all night with open windows, and plenty of fresh warm air is the best of remedies. I can do no better than stay here till the heat becomes too great. I left little Zeyneb at Alexandria with Janet's maid Ellen who quite loves her, and begged to keep her 'for company,' and also to help in their removal to the new house. She clung about me and made me promise to come back to her, but was content to stop with Ellen, whose affection she of course returns. It was pleasant to see her so happy, and how she relished being 'put to bed' with a kiss by Ellen or Sally. Her Turkish master, whom she pronounces to have been batal (bad), called her Salaam es-Sidi (the Peace of her Master); but she said that in her own village she used to be Zeyneb, and so we call her. She has grown fatter and, if possible, blacker. Mahbrooka (Good Fortune), the elder wife of Hegab, the confectioner, was much interested in her, as her fate had been the same. She was bought by an Italian who lived with her till his death, when she married Hegab. She is a pious Muslimeh, and invoked the intercession of Seyidna Mohammad for me when I told her I had no intention of baptizing Zeyneb by force, as had been done to her.

The fault of my lodging here is the noise. We are on the road from the railway and there is no quiet except in the few hot hours, when nothing is heard but the cool tinkle of the Sakka's brass cup as he sells water in the street, or perchance erksoos (liquorice-water), or caroub or raisin sherbet. The erksoos is rather bitter and very good. I drink it a good deal, for drink one must; a gulleh of water is soon gone. A gulleh is a wide-mouthed porous jar, and Nile water drunk out of it without the intervention of a glass is delicious. Omar goes to market every morning with a donkey—I went too, and was much amused—and cooks, and in the evening goes out with me if I want him. I told him I had recommended him highly, and hoped he would get good employment; but he declares that he will go with no one else so long as I come to Egypt, whatever the difference of wages may be. 'The bread I eat with you is sweet'—a pretty little unconscious antithesis to Dante. I have been advising his brother Hajjee Ali to start a hotel at Thebes for invalids, and he has already set about getting a house there; there is one. Next winter there will be steamers twice a week—to Assouan! Juvenal's distant Syene, where he died in banishment. My old washerwoman sent me a fervent entreaty through Omar that I would dine with her one day, since I had made Cairo delightful with my presence. If one will only devour these people's food, they are enchanted; they like that much better than a present. So I will honour her house some day. Good old Hannah, she is divorced for being too fat and old, and replaced by a young Turk whose family sponge on Hajjee Ali and are condescending. If I could afford it, I would have a sketch of a beloved old mosque of mine, falling to decay, and with three palm-trees growing in the middle of it. Indeed, I would have a book full, for all is exquisite, and alas, all is going. The old Copt quarter is entame, and hideous, shabby French houses, like the one I live in, are being run up; and in this weather how much better would be the Arab courtyard, with its mastabah and fountain!

There is a quarrel now in the street; how they talk and gesticulate, and everybody puts in a word; a boy has upset a cake-seller's tray, 'Naal Abu'k!' (Curses on your father) he claims six piastres damages, and everyone gives an opinion pour ou contre. We all look out of the window; my opposite neighbour, the pretty Armenian woman, leans out, and her diamond head-ornaments and earrings glitter as she laughs like a child. The Christian dyer is also very active in the row, which, like all Arab rows, ends in nothing; it evaporates in fine theatrical gestures and lots of talk. Curious! In the street they are so noisy, but get the same men in a coffee-shop or anywhere, and they are the quietest of mankind. Only one man speaks at a time, the rest listen, and never interrupt; twenty men don't make the noise of three Europeans.

Hekekian Bey is my near neighbour, and he comes in and we fronder the Government. His heart is sore with disinterested grief for the sufferings of the people. 'Don't they deserve to be decently governed, to be allowed a little happiness and prosperity? They are so docile, so contented; are they not a good people?' Those were his words as he was recounting some new iniquity. Of course half these acts are done under pretext of improving and civilizing, and the Europeans applaud and say, 'Oh, but nothing could be done without forced labour,' and the poor Fellaheen are marched off in gangs like convicts, and their families starve, and (who'd have thought it) the population keeps diminishing. No wonder the cry is, 'Let the English Queen come and take us.' You see, I don't see things quite as Ross does, but mine is another standpunkt, and my heart is with the Arabs. I care less about opening up the trade with the Soudan and all the new railways, and I should like to see person and property safe, which no one's is here (Europeans, of course, excepted). Ismail Pasha got the Sultan to allow him to take 90,000 feddans of uncultivated land for himself as private property, very well, but the late Viceroy Said granted eight years ago certain uncultivated lands to a good many Turks, his employes, in hopes of founding a landed aristocracy and inducing them to spend their capital in cultivation. They did so, and now Ismail Pasha takes their improved land and gives them feddan for feddan of his new land, which will take five years to bring into cultivation, instead. He forces them to sign a voluntary deed of exchange, or they go off to Fazogloo, a hot Siberia whence none return. The Sultan also left a large sum of money for religious institutions and charities—Muslim, Jew, and Christian. None have received a foddah. It is true the Sultan and his suite plundered the Pasha and the people here; but from all I hear the Sultan really wishes to do good. What is wanted here is hands to till the ground, and wages are very high; food, of course, gets dearer, and the forced labour inflicts more suffering than before, and the population will decrease yet faster. This appears to me to be a state of things in which it is no use to say that public works must be made at any cost. The wealth will perhaps be increased, if meanwhile the people are not exterminated. Then, every new Pasha builds a huge new palace while those of his predecessors fall to ruin. Mehemet Ali's sons even cut down the trees of his beautiful botanical garden and planted beans there; so money is constantly wasted more than if it were thrown into the Nile, for then the Fellaheen would not have to spend their time, so much wanted for agriculture, in building hideous barrack-like so-called palaces. What chokes me is to hear English people talk of the stick being 'the only way to manage Arabs' as if anyone could doubt that it is the easiest way to manage any people where it can be used with impunity.

Sunday.—I went to a large unfinished new Coptic church this morning. Omar went with me up to the women's gallery, and was discreetly going back when he saw me in the right place, but the Coptic women began to talk to him and asked questions about me all the time I was looking down on the strange scene below. I believe they celebrate the ancient mysteries still. The clashing of cymbals, the chanting, a humming unlike any sound I ever heard, the strange yellow copes covered with stranger devices—it was wunderlich. At the end everyone went away, and I went down and took off my shoes to go and look at the church. While I was doing so a side-door opened and a procession entered. A priest dressed in the usual black robe and turban of all Copts carrying a trident-shaped sort of candlestick, another with cymbals, a lot of little boys, and two young ecclesiastics of some sort in the yellow satin copes (contrasting queerly with the familiar tarboosh of common life on their heads), these carried little babies and huge wax tapers, each a baby and a taper. They marched round and round three times, the cymbals going furiously, and chanting a jig tune. The dear little tiny boys marched just in front of the priest with such a pretty little solemn, consequential air. Then they all stopped in front of the sanctuary, and the priest untied a sort of broad-coloured tape which was round each of the babies, reciting something in Coptic all the time, and finally touched their foreheads and hands with water. This is a ceremony subsequent to baptism after I don't know how many days, but the priest ties and then unties the bands. Of what is this symbolical? Je m'y perds. Then an old man gave a little round cake of bread, with a cabalistic-looking pattern on it, both to Omar and to me, which was certainly baked for Isis. A lot of closely-veiled women stood on one side in the aisle, and among them the mothers of the babies who received them from the men in yellow copes at the end of the ceremony. One of these young men was very handsome, and as he stood looking down and smiling on the baby he held, with the light of the torch sharpening the lines of his features, would have made a lovely picture. The expression was sweeter than St. Vincent de Paul, because his smile told that he could have played with the baby as well as have prayed for it. In this country one gets to see how much more beautiful a perfectly natural expression is than any degree of the mystical expression of the best painters, and it is so refreshing that no one tries to look pious. The Muslim looks serious, and often warlike, as he stands at prayer. The Christian just keeps his everyday face. When the Muslim gets into a state of devotional frenzy he does not think of making a face, and it is quite tremendous. I don't think the Copt has any such ardours, but the scene this morning was all the more touching that no one was 'behaving him or herself' at all. A little acolyte peeped into the sacramental cup and swigged off the drops left in it with the most innocent air, and no one rebuked him, and the quite little children ran about in the sanctuary—up to seven they are privileged—and only they and the priests enter it. It is a pretty commentary on the words 'Suffer the little children,' etc.

I am more and more annoyed at not being able to ask questions for myself, as I don't like to ask through a Muslim and no Copts speak any foreign language, or very very few. Omar and Hassan had been at five this morning to the tomb of Sittina Zeyneb, one of the daughters of the Prophet, to 'see her' (Sunday is her day of reception), and say the Fathah at her tomb. Next Friday the great Bairam begins and every Muslim eats a bit of meat at his richer neighbour's expense. It is the day on which the pilgrims go up the sacred mount near Mecca, to hear the sermon which terminates the Haj. Yesterday I went to call on pretty Mrs. Wilkinson, she is an Armenian of the Greek faith, and was gone to pray at the convent of Mar Girgis (St. George) to cure the pains a bad rheumatic fever has left in her hands. Evidently Mar Girgis is simply Ammon Ra, the God of the Sun and great serpent-slayer, who is still revered in Egypt by all sects, and Seyd el-Bedawee is as certainly one form of Osiris. His festivals, held twice a year at Tanta, still display the symbol of the Creator of all things. All is thus here—the women wail the dead, as on the old sculptures, all the ceremonies are pagan, and would shock an Indian Mussulman as much as his objection to eat with a Christian shocks an Arab. This country is a palimpsest, in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that. In the towns the Koran is most visible, in the country Herodotus. I fancy it is most marked and most curious among the Copts, whose churches are shaped like the ancient temples, but they are so much less accessible than the Arabs that I know less of their customs.

Now I have filled such a long letter I hardly know if it is worth sending, and whether you will be amused by my commonplaces of Eastern life. I kill a sheep next Friday, and Omar will cook a stupendous dish for the poor Fellaheen who are lying about the railway-station, waiting to be taken to work somewhere. That is to be my Bairam, and Omar hopes for great benefit for me from the process.



May 25, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, May 25, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have spun such a yarn to my mother that I shall make it serve for both. It may amuse you to see what impression Cairo makes. I ride along on my valiant donkey led by the stalwart Hassan and attended by Omar, and constantly say, 'Oh, if our master were here, how pleased he would be'—husband is not a correct word.

I went out to the tombs yesterday. Fancy that Omar witnessed the destruction of some sixty-eight or so of the most exquisite buildings—the tombs and mosques of the Arab Khaleefehs, which Said Pasha used to divert himself with bombarding for practice for his artillery. Omar was then in the boy corps of camel artillery, now disbanded. Thus the Pasha added the piquancy of sacrilege to barbarity.

The street and the neighbours would divert you. Opposite lives a Christian dyer who must be a seventh brother of the admirable barber. The same impertinence, loquacity, and love of meddling in everybody's business. I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy. My delightful servant, Omar Abou-el-Hallaweh (the father of sweets)—his family are pastrycooks—is the type of all the amiable jeune premiers of the stories. I am privately of opinion that he is Bedr-ed-Deen Hassan, the more that he can make cream tarts and there is no pepper in them. Cream tarts are not very good, but lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts fulfils all one's dreams of excellence. The Arabs next door and the Levantines opposite are quiet enough, but how do they eat all the cucumbers they buy of the man who cries them every morning as 'fruit gathered by sweet girls in the garden with the early dew.'

The more I see of the back-slums of Cairo, the more in love I am with it. The oldest European towns are tame and regular in comparison, and the people are so pleasant. If you smile at anything that amuses you, you get the kindest, brightest smiles in return; they give hospitality with their faces, and if one brings out a few words, 'Mashallah! what Arabic the Sitt Ingleez speaks.' The Arabs are clever enough to understand the amusement of a stranger and to enter into it, and are amused in turn, and they are wonderfully unprejudiced. When Omar explains to me their views on various matters, he adds: 'The Arab people think so—I know not if right;' and the way in which the Arab merchants worked the electric telegraph, and the eagerness of the Fellaheen for steam-ploughs, are quite extraordinary. They are extremely clever and nice children, easily amused, easily roused into a fury which lasts five minutes and leaves no malice, and half the lying and cheating of which they are accused comes from misunderstanding and ignorance. When I first took Omar he was by way of 'ten pounds, twenty pounds,' being nothing for my dignity. But as soon as I told him that 'my master was a Bey who got 100 pounds a month and no backsheesh,' he was as careful as if for himself. They see us come here and do what only their greatest Pashas do, hire a boat to ourselves, and, of course, think our wealth is boundless. The lying is mostly from fright. They dare not suggest a difference of opinion to a European, and lie to get out of scrapes which blind obedience has often got them into. As to the charges of shopkeepers, that is the custom, and the haggling a ceremony you must submit to. It is for the purchaser or employer to offer a price and fix wages—the reverse of Europe—and if you ask the price they ask something fabulous at random.

I hope to go home next month, as soon as it gets too hot here and is likely to be warm enough in England. I do so long to see the children again.



October 19, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ALEXANDRIA, October 19, 1863.

We had a wretched voyage, good weather, but such a petaudiere of a ship. I am competent to describe the horrors of the middle passage—hunger, suffocation, dirt, and such canaille, high and low, on board. The only gentleman was a poor Moor going to Mecca (who stowed his wife and family in a spare boiler on deck). I saw him washing his children in the morning! 'Que c'est degoutant!' was the cry of the French spectators. If an Arab washes he is a sale cochon—no wonder! A delicious man who sat near me on deck, when the sun came round to our side, growled between his clenched teeth: 'Voila un tas d'intrigants a l'ombre tandis que le soleil me grille, moi,' a good resume of French politics, methinks. Well, on arriving at noon of Friday, I was consoled for all by seeing Janet in a boat looking as fresh and bright and merry as ever she could look. The heat has evidently not hurt her at all. Omar's joy was intense. He has had an offer of a place as messenger with the mails to Suez and back, 60 pounds a year; and also his brother wanted him for Lady Herbert of Lea, who has engaged Hajjee Ali, and Ali promised high pay, but Omar said that he could not leave me. 'I think my God give her to me to take care of her, how then I leave her if she not well and not very rich? I can't speak to my God if I do bad things like that.' I am going to his house to-day to see the baby and Hajjee Hannah, who is just come down from Cairo. Omar is gone to try to get a dahabieh to go up the river, as I hear that the half-railway, half-steamer journey is dreadfully inconvenient and fatiguing, and the sight of the overflowing Nile is said to be magnificent, it is all over the land and eight miles of the railway gone. Omar kisses your hand and is charmed with the knife, but far more that my family should know his name and be satisfied with my servant.

I cannot live in Thayer's house because the march of civilization has led a party of French and Wallachian women into the ground-floor thereof to instruct the ignorant Arabs in drinking, card-playing, and other vices. So I will consult Hajjee Hannah to-day; she may know of an empty house and would make divan cushions for me. Zeyneb is much grown and very active and intelligent, but a little louder and bolder than she was owing to the maids here wanting to christianize her, and taking her out unveiled, and letting her be among the men. However, she is as affectionate as ever, and delighted at the prospect of going with me. I have replaced the veil, and Sally has checked her tongue and scolded her sister Ellen for want of decorum, to the amazement of the latter. Janet has a darling Nubian boy. Oh dear! what an elegant person Omar seemed after the French 'gentleman,' and how noble was old Hamees's (Janet's doorkeeper) paternal but reverential blessing! It is a real comfort to live in a nation of truly well-bred people and to encounter kindness after the savage incivility of France.

Tuesday, October 20.

Omar has got a boat for 13 pounds, which is not more than the railway would cost now that half must be done by steamer and a bit on donkeys or on foot. Poor Hajjee Hannah was quite knocked up by the journey down; I shall take her up in my boat. Two and a half hours to sit grilling at noonday on the banks, and two miles to walk carrying one's own baggage is hard lines for a fat old woman. Everything is almost double in price owing to the cattle murrain and the high Nile. Such an inundation as this year was never known before. Does the blue God resent Speke's intrusion on his privacy? It will be a glorious sight, but the damage to crops, and even to the last year's stacks of grain and beans, is frightful. One sails among the palm-trees and over the submerged cotton-fields. Ismail Pasha has been very active, but, alas! his 'eye is bad,' and there have been as many calamities as under Pharaoh in his short reign. The cattle murrain is fearful, and is now beginning in Cairo and Upper Egypt. Ross reckons the loss at twelve millions sterling in cattle. The gazelles in the desert have it too, but not horses, asses or goats.



October 26, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ALEXANDRIA, October 26, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I went to two hareems the other day with a little boy of Mustapha Aga's, and was much pleased. A very pleasant Turkish lady put out all her splendid bedding and dresses for me, and was most amiable. At another a superb Arab with most grande dame manners, dressed in white cotton and with unpainted face, received me statelily. Her house would drive you wild, such antique enamelled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house. A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite imperiousness. One of our great ladies can't half crush a rival in comparison, she does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbours would say at the sight of my face and European hat. She asked about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her eye—she had none.

Tuesday.—The post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must stay in bed and cannot write much. I go on Thursday and shall go to Briggs' house. Pray write to me at Cairo. Sally and I are both unwell and anxious to get up the river. I can't write more.



October 31, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

KAFR ZEYAT, October 31, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

We left Alexandria on Thursday about noon, and sailed with a fair wind along the Mahmoudieh Canal. My little boat flies like a bird, and my men are a capital set of fellows, bold and careful sailors. I have only seven in all, but they work well, and at a pinch Omar leaves the pots and pans and handles a rope or a pole manfully. We sailed all night and passed the locks at Atleh at four o'clock yesterday, and were greeted by old Nile tearing down like a torrent. The river is magnificent, 'seven men's height,' my Reis says, above its usual pitch; it has gone down five or six feet and left a sad scene of havoc on either side. However what the Nile takes he repays with threefold interest, they say. The women are at work rebuilding their mud huts, and the men repairing the dykes. A Frenchman told me he was on board a Pasha's steamer under M. de Lesseps' command, and they passed a flooded village where two hundred or so people stood on their roofs crying for help. Would you, could you, believe it that they passed on and left them to drown? None but an eyewitness could have made me believe such villainy.

All to-day we sailed in such heavenly weather—a sky like nothing but its most beautiful self. At the bend of the river just now we had a grand struggle to get round, and got entangled with a big timber boat. My crew got so vehement that I had to come out with an imperious request to everyone to bless the Prophet. Then the boat nearly pulled the men into the stream, and they pulled and hauled and struggled up to their waists in mud and water, and Omar brandished his pole and shouted 'Islam el Islam!' which gave a fresh spirit to the poor fellows, and round we came with a dash and caught the breeze again. Now we have put up for the night, and shall pass the railway-bridge to-morrow. The railway is all under water from here up to Tantah—eight miles—and in many places higher up.



November 14, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, November 14, 1863.

Here I am at last in my old quarters at Thayer's house, after a tiresome negotiation with the Vice-Consul, who had taken possession and invented the story of women on the ground-floor. I was a week in Briggs' damp house, and too ill to write. The morning I arrived at Cairo I was seized with haemorrhage, and had two days of it; however, since then I am better. I was very foolish to stay a fortnight in Alexandria.

The passage under the railway-bridge at Tantah (which is only opened once in two days) was most exciting and pretty. Such a scramble and dash of boats—two or three hundred at least. Old Zedan, the steersman, slid under the noses of the big boats with my little Cangia and through the gates before they were well open, and we saw the rush and confusion behind us at our ease, and headed the whole fleet for a few miles. Then we stuck, and Zedan raged; but we got off in an hour and again overtook and passed all. And then we saw the spectacle of devastation—whole villages gone, submerged and melted, mud to mud, and the people with their animals encamped on spits of sand or on the dykes in long rows of ragged makeshift tents, while we sailed over where they had lived. Cotton rotting in all directions and the dry tops crackling under the bows of the boat. When we stopped to buy milk, the poor woman exclaimed: 'Milk! from where? Do you want it out of my breasts?' However, she took our saucepan and went to get some from another family. No one refuses it if they have a drop left, for they all believe the murrain to be a punishment for churlishness to strangers—by whom committed no one can say. Nor would they fix a price, or take more than the old rate. But here everything has doubled in price.

Never did a present give such pleasure as Mme. De Leo's bracelet. De Leo came quite overflowing with gratitude at my having remembered such a trifle as his attending me and coming three times a day! He thinks me looking better, and advises me to stay on here till I feel it cold. Mr. Thayer's underling has been doing Levantine rogueries, selling the American protege's claims to the Egyptian Government, and I witnessed a curious phase of Eastern life. Omar, when he found him in my house, went and ordered him out. I was ill in bed, and knew nothing till it was done, and when I asked Omar how he came to do it, he told me to be civil to him if I saw him as it was not for me to know what he was; that was his (Omar's) business. At the same time Mr. Thayer's servant sent him a telegram so insolent that it amounted to a kicking. Such is the Nemesis for being a rogue here. The servants know you, and let you feel it. I was quite 'flabbergasted' at Omar, who is so reverential to me and to the Rosses, and who I fancied trembled before every European, taking such a tone to a man in the position of a 'gentleman.' It is a fresh proof of the feeling of actual equality among men that lies at the bottom of such great inequality of position. Hekekian Bey has seen a Turkish Pasha's shins kicked by his own servants, who were cognizant of his misdeeds. Finally, on Thursday we got the keys of the house, and Omar came with two ferashes and shovelled out the Levantine dirt, and scoured and scrubbed; and on Friday afternoon (yesterday) we came in. Zeyneb has been very good ever since she has been with us, she will soon be a complete 'dragowoman,' for she is learning Arabic from Omar and English from us fast. In Janet's house she only heard a sort of 'lingua franca' of Greek, Italian, Nubian and English. She asked me 'How piccolo bint?' (How's the little girl?) a fine specimen of Alexandrian. Ross is here, and will dine with me to-night before starting by an express train which Ismail Pasha gives him.

On Thursday evening I rode to the Abbassieh, and met all the schoolboys going home for their Friday. Such a pretty sight! The little Turks on grand horses with velvet trappings and two or three sais running before them, and the Arab boys fetched—some by proud fathers on handsome donkeys, some by trusty servants on foot, some by poor mothers astride on shabby donkeys and taking up their darlings before them, some two and three on one donkey, and crowds on foot. Such a number of lovely faces—all dressed in white European-cut clothes and red tarbooshes.

Last night we had a wedding opposite. A pretty boy, about Maurice's size, or rather less, with a friend of his own size, dressed like him in a scarlet robe and turban, on each side, and surrounded by men carrying tapers and singing songs, and preceded by cressets flaring. He stepped along like Agag, very slowly and mincingly, and looked very shy and pretty. My poor Hassan (donkey-driver) is ill—I fear very ill. His father came with the donkey for me, and kept drawing his sleeve over his eyes and sighing so heavily. 'Yah Hassan meskeen! yah Hassan ibn!' (Oh poor Hassan! oh Hassan my son!); and then, in a resigned tone, 'Allah kereem' (God is merciful). I will go and see him this morning, and have a doctor to him 'by force,' as Omar says, if he is very bad. There is something heart-rending in the patient, helpless suffering of these people.

Sunday.—Abu Hassan reported his son so much better that I did not go after him, having several things to do, and Omar being deep in cooking a festin de Balthazar because Ross was to dine with me. The weather is delicious—much what we had at Bournemouth in summer—but there is a great deal of sickness, and I fear there will be more, from people burying dead cattle on their premises inside the town. It costs 100 gersh to bury one outside the town. All labour is rendered scarce, too, as well as food dear, and the streets are not cleaned and water hard to get. My sakka comes very irregularly, and makes quite a favour of supplying us with water. All this must tell heavily on the poor. Hekekian's wife had seventy head of cattle on her farm—one wretched bullock is left; and, of seven to water the house in Cairo, also one left, and that expected to die. I wonder what ill-conditioned fellow of a Moses is at the bottom of it. Hajjee Ali has just been here, and offers me his tents if I like to go up to Thebes and not live in a boat, so that I may not be dependent on getting a house there. He is engaged by Lady Herbert of Lea, so will not go to Syria this year and has all his tents to spare. I fancy I might be very comfortable among the tombs of the Kings or in the valley of Assaseef with good tents. It is never cold at all among the hills at Thebes—au contraire. On the sunny side of the valley you are broiled and stunned with heat in January, and in the shade it is heavenly. How I do wish you could come too, how you would enjoy it! I shall rather like the change from a boat life to a Bedawee one, with my own sheep and chickens and horse about the tent, and a small following of ragged retainers; moreover, it will be considerably cheaper, I think.



November 21, 1863: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

CAIRO, November 21, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I shall stay on here till it gets colder, and then go up the Nile either in a steamer or a boat. The old father of my donkey-boy, Hassan, gave me a fine illustration of Arab feeling towards women to-day. I asked if Abd el-Kader was coming here, as I had heard; he did not know, and asked me if he were not Achul en-Benat, a brother of girls. I prosaically said I did not know if he had sisters. 'The Arabs, O lady, call that man a "brother of girls" to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength and courage to fight for their protection.' Omar suggested a 'thorough gentleman' as the equivalent of Abou Hassan's title. Our European galimatias about the 'smiles of the fair,' etc., look very mean beside 'Achul en Benat,' methinks. Moreover, they carry it into common life. Omar was telling me of some little family tribulations, showing that he is not a little henpecked. His wife wanted all his money. I asked how much she had of her own, as I knew she had property. 'Oh, ma'am! I can't speak of that, shame for me if I ask what money she got.' A man married at Alexandria, and took home the daily provisions for the first week; after that he neglected it for two days, and came home with a lemon in his hand. He asked for some dinner, and his wife placed the stool and the tray and the washing basin and napkin, and in the tray the lemon cut in quarters. 'Well, and the dinner?' 'Dinner! you want dinner? Where from? What man are you to want women when you don't keep them? I am going to the Cadi to be divorced from you;' and she did. The man must provide all necessaries for his Hareem, and if she has money or earns any she spends it in dress; if she makes him a skullcap or a handkerchief he must pay her for her work. Tout n'est pas roses for these Eastern tyrants, not to speak of the unbridled license of tongue allowed to women and children. Zeyneb hectors Omar and I cannot persuade him to check her. 'How I say anything to it, that one child?' Of course, the children are insupportable, and, I fancy, the women little better.

A poor neighbour of mine lost his little boy yesterday, and came out in the streets, as usual, for sympathy. He stood under my window leaning his head against the wall, and sobbing and crying till, literally, his tears wetted the dust. He was too grieved to tear off his turban or to lament in form, but clasped his hands and cried, 'Yah weled, yah weled, yah weled' (O my boy, my boy). The bean-seller opposite shut his shop, the dyer took no notice but smoked his pipe. Some people passed on, but many stopped and stood round the poor man, saying nothing, but looking concerned. Two were well-dressed Copts on handsome donkeys, who dismounted, and all waited till he went home, when about twenty men accompanied him with a respectful air. How strange it seems to us to go out into the street and call on the passers-by to grieve with one! I was at the house of Hekekian Bey the other day when he received a parcel from his former slave, now the Sultan's chief eunuch. It contained a very fine photograph of the eunuch—whose face, though negro, is very intelligent and of charming expression—a present of illustrated English books, and some printed music composed by the Sultan, Abd el Aziz, himself. O tempera! O mores! one was a waltz. The very ugliest and scrubbiest of street dogs has adopted me—like the Irishman who wrote to Lord Lansdowne that he had selected him as his patron—and he guards the house and follows me in the street. He is rewarded with scraps, and Sally cost me a new tin mug by letting the dog drink out of the old one, which was used to scoop the water from the jars, forgetting that Omar and Zeyneb could not drink after the poor beast.

Monday.—I went yesterday to the port of Cairo, Boulak, to see Hassaneyn Effendi about boats. He was gone up the Nile, and I sat with his wife—a very nice Turkish woman who speaks English to perfection—and heard all sorts of curious things. I heard the whole story of an unhappy marriage made by Leyla, my hostess's sister, and much Cairo gossip. Like all Eastern ladies that I have seen she complains of indigestion, and said she knew she ought to go out more and to walk, but custom e contra il nostro decoro.

Mr. Thayer will be back in Egypt on December 15, so I shall embark about that time, as he may want his house here. It is now a little fresh in the early morning, but like fine English summer weather.

Tuesday.—Since I have been here my cough is nearly gone, and I am better for having good food again. Omar manages to get good mutton, and I have discovered that some of the Nile fish is excellent. The abyad, six or eight feet long and very fat, is delicious, and I am told there are still better; the eels are delicate and good too. Maurice might hook an abyad, but how would he land him? The worst is that everything is just double the price of last year, as, of course, no beef can be eaten at all, and the draught oxen being dead makes labour dear as well. The high Nile was a small misfortune compared to the murrain. There is a legend about it, of course. A certain Sheykh el-Beled (burgomaster) of some place—not mentioned—lost his cattle, and being rich defied God, said he did not care, and bought as many more; they died too, and he continued impenitent and defiant, and bought on till he was ruined, and now he is sinking into the earth bodily, though his friends dig and dig without ceasing night and day. It is curious how like the German legends the Arab ones are. All those about wasting bread wantonly are almost identical. If a bit is dirty, Omar carefully gives it to the dog; if clean, he keeps it in a drawer for making breadcrumbs for cutlets; not a bit must fall on the floor. In other things they are careless enough, but das liebe Brod is sacred—vide Grimm's Deutsche Sagen. I am constantly struck with resemblances to German customs. A Fellah wedding is very like the German Bauern hochzeit firing of guns and display of household goods, only on a camel instead of a cart. I have been trying to get a teacher of Arabic, but it is very hard to find one who knows any European language, and the consular dragoman asks four dollars a lesson. I must wait till I get to Thebes, where I think a certain young Said can teach me. Meanwhile I am beginning to understand rather more and to speak a very little. Please direct to me to Briggs and Co. at Cairo; if I am gone, the letters will follow up the river.



December 1, 1863: Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.

CAIRO, December 1, 1863.

DEAREST JANET,

I should much like to go with Thayer if his times and seasons will suit mine; but I cannot wait indefinitely, still less come down the river before the end of April. But most likely the Pasha will give him a boat. It is getting cold here and I feel my throat sore to-day. I went to see Hassan yesterday, he is much better, but very weak and pale. It is such a nice family—old father, mother, and sister, all well-bred and pleasing like Hassan himself. He almost shrieked at hearing of your fall, and is most anxious to see you when you come here. Zeyneb, after behaving very well for three weeks, has turned quietly sullen and displays great religious intolerance. It would seem that the Berberi men have put it into her head that we are inferior beings, and she pretends not to be able to eat because she thinks everything is pig. Omar's eating the food does not convince her. As she evidently does not like us I will offer her to Mrs. Hekekian Bey, and if she does not do there, in a household of black Mussulman slaves, they must pass her on to a Turkish house. She is very clever and I am sorry, but to keep a sullen face about me is more than I can endure, as I have shown her every possible kindness. I think she despises Omar for his affection towards me. How much easier it is to instil the bad part of religion than the good; it is really a curious phenomenon in so young a child. She waits capitally at table, and can do most things, but she won't move if the fancy takes her except when ordered, and spends her time on the terrace. One thing is that the life is dull for a child, and I think she will be happier in a larger, more bustling house. I don't know whether, after the fearful example of Mrs. B., I can venture to travel up the Nile with such a seducteur as our dear Mr. Thayer. What do you think? Will gray hairs on my side and mutual bad lungs guarantee our international virtue; or will someone ask the Pater when he means to divorce me? Would it be considered that Yankeedoodle had 'stuck a feather in his cap' by leading a British matron and grandmother astray?



December 2, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, December 2, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

It is beginning to be cold here, and I only await the results of my inquiries about possible houses at Thebes to hire a boat and depart. Yesterday I saw a camel go through the eye of a needle—i.e., the low arched door of an enclosure; he must kneel and bow his head to creep through—and thus the rich man must humble himself. See how a false translation spoils a good metaphor, and turns a familiar simile into a ferociously communist sentiment. I expect Henry and Janet here in four or five days when her ancle allows her to travel. If I get a house at Thebes, I will only hire a boat up and dismiss it, and trust to Allah for my return. There are rumours of troubles at Jeddah, and a sort of expectation of fighting somewhere next spring; even here people are buying arms to a great extent, I think the gunsmiths' bazaar looks unusually lively. I do look forward to next November and your coming here; I know you would donkey-ride all day in a state of ecstasy. I never saw so good a servant as Omar and such a nice creature, so pleasant and good. When I hear and see what other people spend here in travelling and in living, and what bother they have, I say: 'May God favour Omar and his descendants.'

I stayed in bed yesterday for a cold, and my next-door neighbour, a Coptic merchant, kept me awake all night by auditing his accounts with his clerk. How would you like to chant your rows of figures? He had just bought lots of cotton, and I had to get into my door on Monday over a camel's back, the street being filled with bales.

* * * * *

[The house at Thebes of which my mother speaks in the following letter was built about 1815, over the ancient temple of Khem, by Mr. Salt, English Consul-General in Egypt. He was an archaeologist and a student of hieroglyphics, and when Belzoni landed at Alexandria was struck by his ability, and sent him up to Thebes to superintend the removal of the great bust of Memnon, now in the British Museum. Belzoni, I believe, lived for some time in Mr. Salt's house, which afterwards became the property of the French Government, and was known as the Maison de France; it was pulled down in 1884 when the great temple of Luxor was excavated by M. Maspero. My late friend Miss A. B. Edwards wrote a description of his work in the Illustrated London News, from which I give a few extracts:

'Squatters settled upon the temple like a swarm of mason bees; and the extent of the mischief they perpetrated in the course of centuries may be gathered from the fact that they raised the level of the surrounding soil to such a height that the obelisks, the colossi, and the entrance pylon were buried to a depth of 40 feet, while inside the building the level of the native village was 50 feet above the original pavement. Seven months ago the first court contained not only the local mosque, but a labyrinthine maze of mud structures, numbering some thirty dwellings, and eighty strawsheds, besides yards, stables, and pigeon-towers, the whole being intersected by innumerable lanes and passages. Two large mansions—real mansions, spacious and, in Arab fashion, luxurious,—blocked the great Colonnade of Horembebi; while the second court, and all the open spaces and ruined parts of the upper end of the Temple, were encumbered by sheepfolds, goat-yards, poultry-yards, donkey-sheds, clusters of mud huts, refuse-heaps, and piles of broken pottery. Upon the roof of the portico there stood a large, rambling, ruinous old house, the property of the French Government, and known as the "Maison de France" . . . Within its walls the illustrious Champollion and his ally Rosellini lived and worked together in 1829, during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Here the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde took up their temporary quarters. And here, most interesting to English readers, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through some of her last winters, and wrote most of her delightful "Letters from Egypt." A little balcony with a broken veranda and a bit of lattice-work parapet, juts out above some mud walls at the end of the building. Upon that balcony she was wont to sit in the cool of the evening, watching the boats upon the river and the magical effect of the after-glow upon the Libyan mountains opposite. All these buildings—"Maison de France," stores, yards, etc. . . . are all swept away.']



December 17, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, December 17, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

At last I hope I shall get off in a few days. I have had one delay and bother after another, chiefly caused by relying on the fine speeches of Mr. D. On applying straight to the French Consulate at Alexandria, Janet got me the loan of the Maison de France at Thebes at once. M. Mounier, the agent to Halim Pasha, is going up to Esneh, and will let me travel in the steamer which is to tow his dahabieh. It will be dirty, but will cost little and take me out of this dreadful cold weather in five or six days.

December 22.—I wrote the above five days ago, since when I have had to turn out of Thayer's house, as his new Vice-Consul wanted it, and am back at Briggs'. M. Mounier is waiting in frantic impatience to set off, and I ditto; but Ismail Pasha keeps him from day to day. The worry of depending on anyone in the East is beyond belief. Tell your mother that Lady Herbert is gone up the river; her son was much the better for Cairo. I saw Pietro, her courier, who is stupendously grand, he offered Omar 8 pounds a month to go with them; you may imagine how Pietro despised his heathenish ignorance in preferring to stay with me for 3 pounds. It quite confirmed him in his contempt for the Arabs.

You would have laughed to hear me buying a carpet. I saw an old broker with one on his shoulder in the bazaar, and asked the price, 'eight napoleons'—then it was unfolded and spread in the street, to the great inconvenience of passers-by, just in front of a coffee-shop. I look at it superciliously, and say, 'Three hundred piastres, O uncle,' the poor old broker cries out in despair to the men sitting outside the coffee-shop: 'O Muslims, hear that and look at this excellent carpet. Three hundred piastres! By the faith, it is worth two thousand!' But the men take my part and one mildly says: 'I wonder that an old man as thou art should tell us that this lady, who is a traveller and a person of experience, values it at three hundred—thinkest thou we will give thee more?' Then another suggests that if the lady will consent to give four napoleons, he had better take them, and that settles it. Everybody gives an opinion here, and the price is fixed by a sort of improvised jury.

Christmas Day.—At last my departure is fixed. I embark to-morrow afternoon at Boulak, and we sail—or steam, rather—on Sunday morning early, and expect to reach Thebes in eight days. I heard a curious illustration of Arab manners to-day. I met Hassan, the janissary of the American Consulate, a very respectable, good man. He told me he had married another wife since last year—I asked what for. It was the widow of his brother who had always lived with him in the same house, and who died leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not to let her marry a stranger. So you see that polygamy is not always sensual indulgence, and a man may practise greater self-sacrifice so than by talking sentiment about deceased wives' sisters. Hassan has 3 pounds a month, and two wives come expensive. I said, laughing, to Omar as we left him, that I did not think the two wives sounded very comfortable. 'Oh no! not comfortable at all for the man, but he take care of the women, that's what is proper—that is the good Mussulman.'

I shall have the company of a Turkish Effendi on my voyage—a Commissioner of Inland Revenue, in fact, going to look after the tax-gatherers in the Saeed. I wonder whether he will be civil. Sally is gone with some English servants out to the Virgin's tree, the great picnic frolic of Cairene Christians, and, indeed, of Muslimeen also at some seasons. Omar is gone to a Khatmeh—a reading of the Koran—at Hassan the donkey-boy's house. I was asked, but am afraid of the night air. A good deal of religious celebration goes on now, the middle of the month of Regeb, six weeks before Ramadan. I rather dread Ramadan as Omar is sure to be faint and ill, and everybody else cross during the first five days or so; then their stomachs get into training. The new passenger-steamers have been promised ever since the 6th, and will not now go till after the races—6th or 7th of next month. Fancy the Cairo races! It is growing dreadfully Cockney here, I must go to Timbuctoo: and we are to have a railway to Mecca, and take return tickets for the Haj from all parts of the world.



December 27, 1863: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

BOULAK, ON BOARD A RIVER STEAM-BOAT, December 27, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

After infinite delays and worries, we are at last on board, and shall sail to-morrow morning. After all was comfortably settled, Ismail Pasha sent for all the steamers up to Rhoda, near Minieh, and at the same time ordered a Turkish General to come up instantly somehow. So Latif Pasha, the head of the steamers, had to turn me out of the best cabin, and if I had not come myself, and taken rather forcible possession of the forecastle cabin, the servants of the Turkish General would not have allowed Omar to embark the baggage. He had been waiting all the morning in despair on the bank; but at four I arrived, and ordered the hammals to carry the goods into the forecabin, and walked on board myself, where the Arab captain pantomimically placed me in his right eye and on the top of his head. Once installed, this has become a hareem, and I may defy the Turkish Effendi with success. I have got a good-sized cabin with good, clean divans round three sides for Sally and myself. Omar will sleep on deck and cook where he can. A poor Turkish lady is to inhabit a sort of dusthole by the side of my cabin; if she seems decent, I will entertain her hospitably. There is no furniture of any sort but the divan, and we cook our own food, bring our own candles, jugs, basins, beds and everything. If Sally and I were not such complete Arabs we should think it very miserable; but as things stand this year we say, Alhamdulillah it is no worse! Luckily it is a very warm night, so we can make our arrangements unchilled. There is no door to the cabin, so we nail up an old plaid, and, as no one ever looks into a hareem, it is quite enough. All on board are Arabs—captain, engineer, and men. An English Sitt is a novelty, and the captain is unhappy that things are not alla Franca for me. We are to tow three dahabiehs—M. Mounier's, one belonging to the envoy from the Sultan of Darfour, and another. Three steamers were to have done it, but the Pasha had a fancy for all the boats, and so our poor little craft must do her best. Only fancy the Queen ordering all the river steamers up to Windsor!

At Minieh the Turkish General leaves us, and we shall have the boat to ourselves, so the captain has just been down to tell me. I should like to go with the gentlemen from Darfor, as you may suppose. See what strange combinations of people float on old Nile. Two Englishwomen, one French (Mme. Mounier), one Frenchman, Turks, Arabs, Negroes, Circassians, and men from Darfor, all in one party; perhaps the third boat contains some other strange element. The Turks are from Constantinople and can't speak Arabic, and make faces at the muddy river water, which, indeed, I would rather have filtered.

I hope to have letters from home to-morrow morning. Hassan, my faithful donkey-boy, will go to the post as soon as it is open and bring them down to Boulak. Darling Rainie sent me a card with a cock robin for Christmas; how terribly I miss her dear little face and talk! I am pretty well now; I only feel rather weaker than before and more easily tired. I send you a kind letter of Mme. Tastu's, who got her son to lend me the house at Thebes.



January 3, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

ON BOARD THE STEAMER, NEAR SIOUT, Sunday, January 3, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

We left Cairo last Sunday morning, and a wonderfully queer company we were. I had been promised all the steamer to myself, but owing to Ismail Pasha's caprices our little steamer had to do the work of three—i.e., to carry passengers, to tow M. Mounier's dahabieh, and to tow the oldest, dirtiest, queerest Nubian boat, in which the young son of the Sultan of Darfoor and the Sultan's envoy, a handsome black of Dongola (not a negro), had visited Ismail Pasha. The best cabin was taken by a sulky old one-eyed Turkish Pasha, so I had the fore-cabin, luckily a large one, where I slept with Sally on one divan and I on the other, and Omar at my feet. He tried sleeping on deck, but the Pasha's Arnouts were too bad company, and the captain begged me to 'cover my face' and let my servant sleep at my feet. Besides, there was a poor old asthmatic Turkish Effendi going to collect the taxes, and a lot of women in the engine-room, and children also. It would have been insupportable but for the hearty politeness of the Arab captain, a regular 'old salt,' and owing to his attention and care it was only very amusing.

At Benisouef, the first town above Cairo (seventy miles), we found no coals: the Pasha had been up and taken them all. So we kicked our heels on the bank all day, with the prospect of doing so for a week. The captain brought H.R.H. of Darfoor to visit me, and to beg me to make him hear reason about the delay, as I, being English, must know that a steamer could not go without coals. H.R.H. was a pretty imperious little nigger about eleven or twelve, dressed in a yellow silk kuftan and a scarlet burnous, who cut the good old captain short by saying, 'Why, she is a woman; she can't talk to me.' 'Wallah! wallah! what a way to talk to English Hareem!' shrieked the captain, who was about to lose his temper; but I had a happy idea and produced a box of French sweetmeats, which altered the young Prince's views at once. I asked if he had brothers. 'Who can count them? they are like mice.' He said that the Pasha had given him only a few presents, and was evidently not pleased. Some of his suite are the most formidable-looking wild beasts in human shape I ever beheld—bulldogs and wild-boars black as ink, red-eyed, and, ye gods! such jowls and throats and teeth!—others like monkeys, with arms down to their knees.

The Illyrian Arnouts on board our boat are revoltingly white—like fish or drowned people, no pink in the tallowy skin at all. There were Greeks also who left us at Minieh (second large town), and the old Pasha left this morning at Rodah. The captain at once ordered all my goods into the cabin he had left and turned out the Turkish Effendi, who wanted to stay and sleep with us. No impropriety! he said he was an old man and sick, and my company would be agreeable to him; then he said he was ashamed before the people to be turned out by an English woman. So I was civil and begged him to pass the day and to dine with me, and that set all right, and now after dinner he has gone off quite pleasantly to the fore-cabin and left me here. I have a stern-cabin, a saloon and an anteroom here, so we are comfortable enough—only the fleas! Never till now did I know what fleas could be; even Omar groaned and tossed in his sleep, and Sally and I woke every ten minutes. Perhaps this cabin may be better, some fleas may have landed in the beds of the Turks. I send a dish from my table every day henceforth to the captain; as I take the place of a Pasha it is part of my dignity to do so; and as I occupy the kitchen and burn the ship's coals, I may as well let the captain dine a little at my expense. In the day I go up and sit in his cabin on deck, and we talk as well as we can without an interpreter. The old fellow is sixty-seven, but does not look more than forty-five. He has just the air and manner of a seafaring-man with us, and has been wrecked four times—the last in the Black Sea during the Crimean War, when he was taken prisoner by the Russians and sent to Moscow for three years, until the peace. He has a charming boy of eleven with him, and he tells me he has twelve children in all, but only one wife, and is as strict a monogamist as Dr. Primrose, for he told me he should not marry again if she died, nor he believed would she. He is surprised at my gray hair.

There are a good many Copts on board too, of a rather low class and not pleasant. The Christian gentlemen are very pleasant, but the low are low indeed compared to the Muslimeen, and one gets a feeling of dirtiness about them to see them eat all among the coals, and then squat there and pull out their beads to pray without washing their hands even. It does look nasty when compared to the Muslim coming up clean washed, and standing erect and manly—looking to his prayers; besides they are coarse in their manners and conversation and have not the Arab respect for women. I only speak of the common people—not of educated Copts. The best fun was to hear the Greeks (one of whom spoke English) abusing the Copts—rogues, heretics, schismatics from the Greek Church, ignorant, rapacious, cunning, impudent, etc., etc. In short, they narrated the whole fable about their own sweet selves. I am quite surprised to see how well these men manage their work. The boat is quite as clean as an English boat as crowded could be kept, and the engine in beautiful order. The head-engineer, Achmet Effendi, and indeed all the crew and captain too, wear English clothes and use the universal 'All right, stop her—fooreh (full) speed, half speed—turn her head,' etc. I was delighted to hear 'All right—go ahead—el-Fathah' in one breath. Here we always say the Fathah (first chapter of the Koran, nearly identical with the Lord's Prayer) when starting on a journey, concluding a bargain, etc. The combination was very quaint. There are rats and fleas on board, but neither bugs nor cockroaches. Already the climate has changed, the air is sensibly drier and clearer and the weather much warmer, and we are not yet at Siout. I remarked last year that the climate changed most at Keneh, forty miles below Thebes. The banks are terribly broken and washed away by the inundation, and the Nile far higher even now than it was six weeks earlier last year.