My Reis wept at the death of the black sheep, which used to follow him to the coffee-shop and the market, and 'was to him as a son,' he said, but he ate of him nevertheless. Omar surreptitiously picked out the best pieces for my dinner for three days, with his usual eye to economy; then lighted a fire of old wood, borrowed a cauldron of some darweeshes, cut up the sheep, added water and salt, onions and herbs, and boiled the sheep. Then the big washing copper (a large round flat tray, like a sponging bath) was filled with bread broken in pieces, over which the broth was slowly poured till the bread was soaked. Next came a layer of boiled rice, on the top of that the pieces of boiled meat, and over all was poured butter, vinegar and garlic boiled together. This is called a Fettah, and is the orthodox dish of darweeshes and given at all Khatmehs and other semi-religious, semi-festive, semi-charitable festivities. It is excellent and not expensive. I asked how many had eaten and was told one hundred and thirty men had 'blessed my hand.' I expended 160 piastres on bread, butter and vinegar, etc. and the sheep was worth two napoleons; three napoleons in all, or less—for I ate for two days of the mutton.

The three Ma-allims came on board this boat, as I said and ate; and it was fine to hear us—how polite we were. 'A bit more, oh Ma-allim?' 'Praise be to God, we have eaten well—we will return to our work'; 'By the Prophet, coffee and a pipe.' 'Truly thou art of the most noble people.' 'Oh Ma-allim, ye have honoured us and rejoiced us,' 'Verily this is a day white among days,' etc. A very clever Egyptian engineer, a pupil of Whitworth's, who is living in a boat alongside mine, was much amused, and said, 'Ah you know how to manage 'em.'

I have learnt the story of the two dead bodies that hitched in my anchor-chain some time ago. They were not Europeans as I thought, but Circassians—a young man and his mother. The mother used to take him to visit an officer's wife who had been brought up in the hareem of the Pasha's mother. The husband caught them, killed them, tied them together and flung them into the Nile near Rhoda, and gave himself into the hands of the police. All was of course hushed up. He goes to Fazoghlou; and I don't know what becomes of the slave-girl, his wife. These sort of things happen every day (as the bodies testify) among the Turks, but the Europeans never hear it. I heard it by a curious chance.

September 4.—My boat will soon be finished, and now will be as good as new. Omar has worked like a good one from daybreak till night, overlooking, buying all the materials, selling all the old wood and iron, etc., and has done capitally. I shall take a paper from my Ma-allims who are all first class men, to certify what they have done and that the boat is as good as new. Goodah Effendi has kindly looked at her several times for me and highly approves the work done. I never saw men do a better day's work than those at the boat. It is pretty to see the carpenter holding the wood with one hand and one foot while he saws it, sitting on the ground—just like the old frescoes. Do you remember the picture of boat-building in the tomb at Sakkara? Well, it is just the same; all done with the adze; but it is stout work they put into it, I can tell you.

If you do not come (and I do not like to press you, I fear the fatigue for you and the return to the cold winter) I shall go to Luxor in a month or so and send back the boat to let. I have a neighbour now, Goodah Effendi, an engineer, who studied and married in England. His wife is gone there with the children, and he is living in a boat close by; so he comes over of an evening very often, and I am glad of his company: he is a right good fellow and very intelligent.

My best love to all at home. I've got a log from the cedars of Lebanon, my Moslem carpenter who smoothed the broken end, swallowed the sawdust, because he believed 'Our Lady Mary' had sat under the tree with 'Our Lord Jesus.'



September 21, 1886: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

OFF BOULAK, September 21, 1886.

I am better again now and go on very comfortably with my two little boys. Omar is from dawn till night at work at my boat, so I have only Mahbrook and Achmet, and you would wonder to see how well I am served. Achmet cooks a very good dinner, serves it and orders Mahbrook about. Sometimes I whistle and hear hader (ready) from the water and in tumbles Achmet, with the water running 'down his innocent nose' and looking just like a little bronze triton of a Renaissance fountain, with a blue shirt and white skull-cap added. Mahbrook is a big lubberly lad of the laugh-and-grow-fat breed, clumsy, but not stupid, and very good and docile. You would delight in his guffaws, and the merry games and hearty laughter of my menage is very pleasant to me. Another boy swims over from Goodah's boat (his Achmet), and then there are games at piracy, and much stealing of red pots from the potter's boats. The joke is to snatch one under the owner's very nose, and swim off brandishing it, whereupon the boatman uses eloquent language, and the boys out-hector him, and everybody is much amused. I only hope Palgrave won't come back from Sookum Kaleh to fetch Mahbrook just as he has got clever—not at stealing jars, but in his work. He already washes my clothes very nicely indeed; his stout black arms are made for a washer-boy. Achmet looked forward with great eagerness to your coming. He is mad to go to England, and in his heart planned to ingratiate himself with you, and go as a 'general servant.' He is very little, if at all, bigger than a child of seven, but an Arab boy 'ne doute de rien' and does serve admirably. What would an English respectable cook say to seeing 'two dishes and a sweet' cooked over a little old wood on a few bricks, by a baby in a blue shirt? and very well cooked too, and followed by incomparable coffee.

You will be pleased to hear that your capital story of the London cabman has its exact counterpart here. 'Oh gracious God, what aileth thee, oh Achmet my brother, and why is thy bosom contracted that thou hast not once said to me d———n thy father, or son of a dog or pig, as thou art used to do.'

Can't you save up your holidays and come for four months next winter with my Maurice? However perhaps you would be bored on the Nile. I don't know. People either enjoy it rapturously or are bored, I believe. I am glad to hear from Janet that you are well. I am much better. The carpenter will finish in the boat to-day, then the painter begins and in a week, Inshallah, I shall get back into her.



September 21, 1886: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

OFF BOULAK, September 21, 1886.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I am a good deal better again; the weather is delightful, and the Nile in full flood, which makes the river scenery from the boat very beautiful. Alick made my mouth water with his descriptions of his rides with Janet about the dear old Surrey country, having her with him seems to have quite set him up. I have seen nothing and nobody but my 'next boat' neighbour, Goodah Effendi, as Omar has been at work all day in the boat, and I felt lazy and disinclined to go out alone. Big Hassan of the donkeys has grown too lazy to go about and I don't care to go alone with a small boy here. However I am out in the best of air all day and am very well off. My two little boys are very diverting and serve me very well. The news from Europe is to my ignorant ideas desolant, a degringolade back into military despotism, which would have excited indignation with us in our fathers' days, I think. I get lots of newspapers from Ross, which afterwards go to an Arab grocer, who reads the Times and the Saturday Review in his shop in the bazaar! what next? The cargo of books which Alick and you sent will be most acceptable for winter consumption. If I were a painter I would take up the Moslem traditions of Joseph and Mary. He was not a white-bearded old gentleman at all you must know, but young, lovely and pure as Our Lady herself. They were cousins, brought up together; and she avoided the light conversation of other girls, and used to go to the well with her jar, hand in hand with Joseph carrying his. After the angel Gabriel had announced to her the will of God, and blown into her sleeve, whereby she conceived 'the Spirit of God,' Joseph saw her state with dismay, and resolved to kill her, as was his duty as her nearest male relation. He followed her, knife in hand, meaning always to kill her at the next tree, and each time his heart failed him, until they reached the well and the tree under which the Divine messenger stood once more and said, 'Fear not oh Joseph, the daughter of thy uncle bears within her Eesa, the Messiah, the Spirit of God.' Joseph married his cousin without fear. Is it not pretty? the two types of youthful purity and piety, standing hand in hand before the angel. I think a painter might make something out of the soft-eyed Syrian boy with his jar on his shoulder (hers on the head), and the grave, modest maiden who shrank from all profane company.

I now know all about Sheykh Seleem, and why he sits naked on the river bank; from very high authority—a great Sheykh to whom it has been revealed. He was entrusted with the care of some of the holy she camels, like that on which the Prophet rode to Jerusalem in one night, and which are invisible to all but the elect, and he lost one, and now he is God's prisoner till she is found.

A letter from aunt Charley all about her own and Rainie's country life, school feasts etc., made me quite cry, and brought before me—oh, how vividly—the difference between East and West, not quite all to the advantage of home however, though mostly. What is pleasant here is the primitive ways. Three times since I have been here lads of most respectable families of Luxor have come to ask hospitality, which consists in a place on the deck of the boat, and liberty to dip their bread in the common dish with my slave boy and Achmet. The bread they brought with them, 'bread and shelter' were not asked, as they slept sub dio. In England I must have refused the hospitality, on account of gene and expense. The chief object to the lads was the respectability of being under my eye while away from their fathers, as a satisfaction to their families; and while they ate and slept like beggars, as we should say, they read their books and chatted with me, when I was out on the deck, on perfectly equal terms, only paying the respect proper to my age. I thought of the 'orphanages and institutions' and all the countless difficulties of that sort, and wondered whether something was not to be said for this absence of civilization in knives, forks, beds, beer, and first and second tables above all. Of course climate has a good deal to do with the facility with which widows and orphans are absorbed here.

Goodbye dearest Mutter: to-day is post day, and Reis Mohammed is about to trudge into town in such a dazzling white turban and such a grand black robe. His first wife, whom he was going to divorce for want of children, has brought him a son, and we jeer him a little about what he may find in Luxor from the second, and wish him a couple of dozen.



October 15, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, October 15, 1866.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have been back in my own boat four days, and most comfortable she is. I enlarged the saloon, and made a good writing table, and low easy divans instead of benches, and added a sort of pantry and sleeping cabin in front; so that Omar has not to come through the saloon to sleep; and I have all the hareem part to myself. Inside there is a good large stern cabin, and wash-closet and two small cabins with beds long enough even for you. Inshallah, you and Maurice will come next winter and go up the Nile and enjoy it with me. I intend to sail in ten days and to send back the 'Urania' to seek work for the winter. We had a very narrow escape of being flooded this year. I fear a deal of damage has been done to the dourrah and cotton crops. It was sad to see the villagers close by here trying to pull up a little green dourrah as the Nile slowly swallowed up the fields.

I was forced to flog Mabrook yesterday for smoking on the sly, a grave offence here on the part of a boy; it is considered disrespectful; so he was ordered, with much parade, to lie down, and Omar gave him two cuts with a rope's end, an apology for a flogging which would have made an Eton boy stare. The stick here is quite nominal, except in official hands. I can't say Mabrook seemed at all impressed, for he was laughing heartily with Omar in less than ten minutes; but the affair was conducted with as much solemnity as an execution.

'Sheykh' Stanley's friend, Gezawee, has married his negro slave to his own sister, on the plea that he was the best young man he knew. What would a Christian family say to such an arrangement?

My boat is beautifully buoyant now, and has come up by the bows in fine style. I have not sailed her yet, but have doubt she will 'walk well' as the Arabs say. Omar got 10 pounds by the sale of old wood and nails, and also gave me 2000 piastres, nearly 12 pounds, which the workmen had given him as a sort of backsheesh. They all pay one, two or three piastres daily to any wakeel (agent) who superintends; that is his profit, and it is enormous at that rate. I said, 'Why did you not refuse it?' But Omar replied they had pay enough after that reduction, which is always made from them, and that in his opinion therefore, it came out of the master's pocket, and was 'cheatery.' How people have been talking nonsense about Jamaica chez vous. I have little doubt Eyre did quite right, and still less doubt that the niggers have had enough of the sort of provocation which I well know, to account for the outbreak. Baker's effusion is a very poor business. There may be blacks like tigers (and whites too in London for that matter). I myself have seen at least five sorts of blacks (negroes, not Arabs), more unlike each other than Swedes are unlike Spaniards; and many are just like ourselves. Of course they want governing with a strong hand, like all ignorant, childish creatures. But I am fully convinced that custom and education are the only real differences between one set of men and another, their inner nature is the same all the world over.

My Reis spoke such a pretty parable the other day that I must needs write it. A Coptic Reis stole some of my wood, which we got back by force and there was some reviling of the Nazarenes in consequence from Hoseyn and Ali; but Reis Mohammed said: 'Not so; Girgis is a thief, it is true, but many Christians are honest; and behold, all the people in the world are like soldiers, some wear red and some blue; some serve on foot, others on horseback, and some in ships; but all serve one Sultan, and each fights in the regiment in which the Sultan has placed him, and he who does his duty best is the best man, be his coat red or blue or black.' I said, 'Excellent words, oh Reis, and fit to be spoken from the best of pulpits.' It is surprising what happy sayings the people here hit upon; they cultivate talk for want of reading, and the consequence is great facility of narration and illustration. Everybody enforces his ideas like Christ, in parables. Hajjee Hannah told me two excellent fairy tales, which I will write for Rainie with some Bowdlerizing, and several laughable stories, which I will leave unrecorded, as savouring too much of Boccaccio's manner, or that of the Queen of Navarre. I told Achmet to sweep the floor after dinner just now. He hesitated, and I called again: 'What manner is this, not to sweep when I bid thee?' 'By the most high God,' said the boy, 'my hand shall not sweep in thy boat after sunset, oh Lady; I would rather have it cut off than sweep thee out of thy property.' I found that you must not sweep at night, nor for three days after the departure of a guest whose return you desire, or of the master of the house. 'Thinkest thou that my brother would sweep away the dust of thy feet from the floors at Luxor,' continued Achmet, 'he would fear never to see thy fortunate face again.' If you don't want to see your visitor again you break a gulleh (water-jar) behind him as he leaves the house, and sweep away his footsteps.

What a canard your papers have in Europe about a constitution here. I won't write any politics, it is all too dreary; and Cairo gossip is odious, as you may judge by the productions of Mesdames Odouard and Lott. Only remember this, there is no law nor justice but the will, or rather the caprice, of one man. It is nearly impossible for any European to conceive such a state of things as really exists. Nothing but perfect familiarity with the governed, i.e. oppressed, class will teach it; however intimate a man may be with the rulers he will never fully take it in. I am a l'index here, and none of the people I know dare come to see me; Arab I mean. It was whispered in my ear in the street by a friend I met. Ismael Pasha's chief pleasure is gossip, and a certain number of persons, chiefly Europeans, furnish him with it daily, true or false. If the farce of the constitution ever should be acted here it will be superb. Something like the Consul going in state to ask the fellaheen what wages they got. I could tell you a little of the value of consular information; but what is the use? Europe is enchanted with the enlightened Pasha who has ruined this fine country.

I long so to see you and Rainie! I don't like to hope too much, but Inshallah, next year I shall see you all.



October 19, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

OFF BOULAK, October 19, 1866.

I shall soon sail up the river. Yesterday Seyd Mustapha arrived, who says that the Greeks are all gone, and the poor Austrian at Thebes is dead, so I shall represent Europe in my single person from Siout to, I suppose, Khartoum.

You would delight in Mabrook; a man asked him the other day after his flogging, if he would not run away, to see what he would say as he alleged, I suspect he meant to steal and sell him. 'I run away, to eat lentils like you? when my Effendi gives me meat and bread every day, and I eat such a lot.' Is not that a delicious practical view of liberty? The creature's enjoyment of life is quite a pleasure to witness, and he really works very well and with great alacrity. If Palgrave claims him I think I must buy him.

I hear sad accounts from the Saeed: the new taxes and the new levies of soldiers are driving the people to despair and many are running away from the land, which will no longer feed them after paying all exactions, to join the Bedaween in the desert, which is just as if our peasantry turned gipsies. A man from Dishne visited me: the people there want me to settle in their village and offer me a voluntary corvee if I will buy land, so many men to work for me two days a month each, I haven't a conception why. It is a place about fifty miles below Luxor, a large agricultural village.

Omar's wife Mabrookah came here yesterday, a nice young woman, and the babies are fine children and very sweet-tempered. She told me that the lion's head, which I sent down to Alexandria to go to you, was in her room when a neighbour of hers, who had never had a child, saw it, and at once conceived. The old image worship survives in the belief, which is all over Egypt, that the 'Anteeks' (antiques) can cure barrenness. Mabrookah was of course very smartly dressed, and the reckless way in which Eastern women treat their fine clothes gives them a grand air, which no Parisian Duchess could hope to imitate—not that I think it a virtue mind you, but some vices are genteel.

Last night was a great Sheykh's fete, such drumming and singing, and ferrying across the river. The Nile is running down unusually fast, and I think I had better go soon, as the mud of Cairo is not so sweet as the mud of the upper land.



October 25, 1866: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

OFF BOULAK, October 25, 1866.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have got all ready, and shall sail on Saturday. My men have baked the bread, and received their wages to go to Luxor and bring the boat back to let. It is turning cold, but I feel none the worse for it, though I shall be glad to go. I've had a dreary, worrying time here, and am tired of hearing of all the meannesses and wickedness which constitute the on dits here. Not that I hear much, but there is nothing else. I shall be best at Luxor now the winter has set in so early. You would laugh at such winter when one sits out all day under an awning in English summer clothes, and wants only two blankets at night; but all is comparative ici bas, and I call it cold, and Mabrook ceases to consider his clothes such a grievance as they were to him at first, and takes kindly to a rough capote for the night. I have just been interrupted by my Reis and one of my men, who came in to display the gorgeous printed calico they have bought; one for his Luxor wife and the other for his betrothed up near Assouan. (The latter is about eight years old, and Hosein has dressed her and paid her expenses these five years, as is the custom up in that district.) The Reis has bought a silk head-kerchief for nine shillings, but that was in the marriage contract. So I must see, admire and wish good luck to the finery, and to the girls who are to wear it. Then we had a little talk about the prospects of letting the boat, and, Inshallah, making some money for el gamma, i.e., 'all our company,' or 'all of us together.' The Reis hopes that the Howagat will not be too outrageous in their ways or given to use the stick, as the solution of every difficulty.

The young Shurafa of Abu-l-Hajjaj came from Gama'l Azhar to-day to bid me goodbye and bring their letters for Luxor. I asked them about the rumours that the Ulema are preaching against the Franks (which is always being said), but they had heard nothing of the sort, and said they had not heard of anything the Franks had done lately which would signify to the Muslims at all. It is not the Franks who press so many soldiers, or levy such heavy taxes three months in advance! I will soon write again. I feel rather like the wandering Jew and long for home and rest, without being dissatisfied with what I have and enjoy, God knows. If I could get better and come home next summer.



November 21, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, November 21, 1866

DEAREST ALICK,

I arrived here on the morning of the 11th. I am a beast not to have written, but I caught cold after four days and have really not been well, so forgive me, and I will narrate and not apologize. We came up best pace, as the boat is a flyer now, only fourteen days to Thebes, and to Keneh only eleven. Then we had bad winds, and my men pulled away at the rope, and sang about the Reis el-Arousa (bridegroom) going to his bride, and even Omar went and pulled the rope. We were all very merry, and played practical jokes on a rascal who wanted a pound to guide me to the tombs: we made him run miles, fetch innumerable donkeys, and then laughed at his beard. Such is boatmen fun. On arriving at Luxor I heard a charivari of voices, and knew I was 'at home,' by the shrill pipe of the little children, el Sitt, el Sitt. Visitors all day of course, at night comes up another dahabieh, great commotion, as it had been telegraphed from Cairo (which I knew before I left, and was to be stopped). So I coolly said, 'Oh Mustapha, the Indian saint (Walee) is in thine eye, seeing that an Indian is all as one with an Englishman.' 'How did I know there was an Indian and a Walee?' etc. Meanwhile the Walee had a bad thumb, and some one told his slave that there was a wonderful English doctress, so in the morning he sent for me, and I went inside the hareem. He was very friendly, and made me sit close beside him, told me he was fourth in descent from Abd el-Kader Gylamee of Bagdad, but his father settled at Hyderabad, where he has great estates. He said he was a Walee or saint, and would have it that I was in the path of the darweeshes; gave me medicine for my cough; asked me many questions, and finally gave me five dollars and asked if I wanted more? I thanked him heartily, kissed the money politely, and told him I was not poor enough to want it and would give it in his name to the poor of Luxor, but that I would never forget that the Indian Sheykh had behaved like a brother to an English woman in a strange land. He then spoke in great praise of the 'laws of the English,' and said many more kind things to me, adding again, 'I tell thee thou art a Darweesh, and do not thou forget me.' Another Indian from Lahore, I believe the Sheykh's tailor, came to see me—an intelligent man, and a Syrian doctor; a manifest scamp. The people here said he was a bahlawar (rope-dancer). Well, the authorities detained the boat with fair words till orders came from Keneh to let them go up further. Meanwhile the Sheykh came out and performed some miracles, which I was not there to see, perfuming people's hands by touching them with his, and taking English sovereigns out of a pocketless jacket, and the doctor told wonders of him. Anyhow he spent 10 pounds in one day here, and he is a regular darweesh. He and all the Hareem were poorly dressed and wore no ornaments whatever. I hope Seyd Abdurachman will come down safe again, but no one knows what the Government wants of him or why he is so watched. It is the first time I ever saw an Oriental travelling for pleasure. He had about ten or twelve in the hareem, among them his three little girls, and perhaps twenty men outside, Indians, and Arabs from Syria, I fancy.

Next day I moved into the old house, and found one end in ruins, owing to the high Nile and want of repair. However there is plenty more safe and comfortable. I settled all accounts with my men, and made an inventory in Arabic, which Sheykh Yussuf wrote for me, which we laughed over hugely. How to express a sauce-boat, a pie-dish, etc. in Arabic, was a poser. A genteel Effendi, who sat by, at last burst out in uncontrollable amazement; 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants of Escandarieh, (Alexandria), three tablecloths, forty dishes, to each soul seven plates of all sorts, seven knives and seven forks and seven spoons, large and small, and seven different glasses for wine and beer and water.' 'It is the will of God,' replied the Effendi, rather put down: 'but,' he added, 'it must be a dreadful fatigue to them to eat their dinner.' Then came an impudent merchant who wanted to go down with his bales and five souls in my boat for nothing. But I said, 'Oh man, she is my property, and I will eat from her of thy money as of the money of the Franks.' Whereupon he offered 1 pound, but was bundled out amid general reproaches for his avarice and want of shame. So all the company said a Fattah for the success of the voyage, and Reis Mohammed was exhorted to 'open his eyes,' and he should have a tarboosh if he did well.

Then I went to visit my kind friend the Maohn's wife, and tell her all about her charming daughter and grandchildren. I was, of course, an hour in the streets salaaming, etc. 'Sheerafteenee Beledna, thou hast honoured our country on all sides.' 'Blessings come with thee,' etc.

Everything is cheaper than last year, but there is no money to buy with, and the taxes have grown beyond bearing, as a fellah said, 'a man can't (we will express it "blow his nose," if you please; the real phrase was less parliamentary, and expressive of something at once ventose and valueless) without a cawass behind him to levy a tax on it.' The ha'porth of onions we buy in the market is taxed on the spot, and the fish which the man catches under my window. I paid a tax on buying charcoal, and another on having it weighed. People are terribly beaten to get next year's taxes out of them, which they have not the money to pay.

The Nubian M.P.'s passed the other day in three boats, towed by a steamer, very frightened and sullen. I fell in with some Egyptians on my way, and tried the European style of talk. 'Now you will help to govern the country, what a fine thing for you,' etc. I got such a look of rueful reproach. 'Laugh not thou at our beards O Effendim! God's mercy, what words are these? and who is there on the banks of the Nile who can say anything but hader (ready), with both hands on the head, and a salaam to the ground even to a Moudir; and thou talkest of speaking before Effendina! Art thou mad, Effendim?' Of all the vexations none are more trying than the distinctions which have been inflicted on the unlucky Sheykhs el-Beled. In fear and trembling they ate their Effendina's banquet and sadly paid the bill: and those who have had the Nishan (the order of the Mejeedee) have had to disburse fees whereat the Lord Chamberlain's staff's mouths might water, and now the wretched delegates to the Egyptian Chambers (God save the mark) are going down with their hearts in their shoes. The Nubians say that the Divan is to be held in the Citadel and that the road by which the Memlook Beys left it is not stopped up, though perhaps it goes underground nowadays. {315}

November 27.—The first steamer full of travellers has just arrived, and with it the bother of the ladies all wanting my saddle. I forbade Mustapha to send for it, but they intimidate the poor old fellow, and he comes and kisses my hand not to get him into trouble with one old woman who says she is the relation of a Consul and a great lady in her own country. I am what Mrs. Grote called 'cake' enough to concede to Mustapha's fears what I had sworn to refuse henceforth. Last year five women on one steamer all sent for my saddle, besides other things—campstools, umbrellas, beer, etc., etc. This year I'll bolt the doors when I see a steamer coming. I hear the big people are so angry with the Indian saint because he treated them like dirt everywhere. One great man went with a Moudir to see him, and asked him to sell him a memlook (a young slave boy). The Indian, who had not spoken or saluted, burst forth, 'Be silent, thou wicked one! dost thou dare to ask me to sell thee a soul to take it with thee to hell?' Fancy the surprise of the 'distinguished' Turk. Never had he heard such language. The story has travelled all up the river and is of course much enjoyed.

Last night Sheykh Yussuf gave an entertainment, killed a sheep, and had a reading of the Sirat er-Russoul (Chapter on the Prophet). It was the night of the Prophet's great vision, and is a great night in Islam. I was sorry not to be well enough to go. Now that there is no Kadee here, Sheykh Yussuf has lots of business to settle; and he came to me and said, 'Expound to me the laws of marriage and inheritance of the Christians, that I may do no wrong in the affairs of the Copts, for they won't go and be settled by the priest out of the Gospels, and I can't find any laws, except about marriage in the Gospels.' I set him up with the text of the tribute money, and told him to judge according to his own laws, for that Christians had no laws other than those of the country they lived in. Poor Yussuf was sore perplexed about a divorce case. I refused to 'expound,' and told him all the learned in the law in England had not yet settled which text to follow.

Do you remember the German story of the lad who travelled um das Gruseln zu lernen? Well, I, who never gruselte before, had a touch of it a few evenings ago. I was sitting here quietly drinking tea, and four or five men were present, when a cat came to the door. I called 'biss, biss,' and offered milk, but pussy, after looking at us, ran away. 'Well dost thou, oh Lady,' said a quiet, sensible man, a merchant here, 'to be kind to the cat, for I dare say he gets little enough at home; his father, poor man, cannot cook for his children every day.' And then in an explanatory tone to the company, 'That is Alee Nasseeree's boy Yussuf—it must be Yussuf, because his fellow twin Ismaeen is with his mule at Negadeh.' Mir gruselte, I confess, not but what I have heard things almost as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe; but an 'extravagance' in a kuftan has quite a different effect from one in a tail coat. 'What my butcher's boy who brings the meat—a cat?' I gasped. 'To be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see. All twins go out as cats at night if they go to sleep hungry; and their own bodies lie at home like dead meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die. When they grow up to ten or twelve they leave it off. Why your boy Achmet does it. Oh Achmet! do you go out as a cat at night?' 'No,' said Achmet tranquilly, 'I am not a twin—my sister's sons do.' I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats. 'No, there is no fear, they only eat a little of the cookery, but if you beat them they will tell their parents next day, "So-and-so beat me in his house last night," and show their bruises. No, they are not Afreets, they are beni Adam (sons of Adam), only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion broth and camel's milk the first thing when they are born, they don't do it at all.' Omar professed never to have heard of it, but I am sure he had, only he dreads being laughed at. One of the American missionaries told me something like it as belonging to the Copts, but it is entirely Egyptian, and common to both religions. I asked several Copts who assured me it was true, and told it just the same. Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration? However the notion fully accounts for the horror the people feel at the idea of killing a cat.

A poor pilgrim from the black country was taken ill yesterday at a village six miles from here, he could speak only a few words of Arabic and begged to be carried to the Abab'deh. So the Sheykh el-Beled put him on a donkey and sent him and his little boy, and laid him in Sheykh Hassan's house. He called for Hassan and begged him to take care of the child, and to send him to an uncle somewhere in Cairo. Hassan said, 'Oh you will get well Inshallah, etc., and take the boy with you.' 'I cannot take him into the grave with me,' said the black pilgrim. Well in the night he died and the boy went to Hassan's mat and said, 'Oh Hassan, my father is dead.' So the two Sheykhs and several men got up and went and sat with the boy till dawn, because he refused to lie down or to leave his father's corpse. At daybreak he said, 'Take me now and sell me, and buy new cloth to dress my father for the tomb.' All the Abab'deh cried when they heard it, and Hassan went and bought the cloth, and some sweet stuff for the boy who remains with him. Such is death on the road in Egypt. I tell it as Hassan's slave told it to me, and somehow we all cried again at the poor little boy rising from his dead father's side to say, 'Come now sell me to dress my father for the tomb.' These strange black pilgrims always interest me. Many take four years to Mecca and home, and have children born to them on the road, and learn a few words of Arabic.



December 5, 1866: Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.

LUXOR, December 5, 1866.

DEAREST JANET,

I write in answer to yours by the steamer, to go down by the same. I fancy I should be quite of your mind about Italy. I hate the return of Europe to

'The good old rule and ancient plan, That he should take who has the power, And he should keep who can.'

Nor can I be bullied into looking on 'might' as 'right.' Many thanks for the papers, I am anxious to hear about the Candia business. All my neighbours are sick at heart. The black boy Palgrave left with me is a very good lad, only he can't keep his clothes clean, never having been subject to that annoyance before. He has begun to be affectionate ever since I did not beat him for breaking my only looking-glass. I wish an absurd respect for public opinion did not compel him to wear a blue shirt and a tarboosh (his suit), I see it is misery to him. He is a very gentle cannibal.

I have been very unwell indeed and still am extremely weak, but I hope I am on the mend. A eunuch here who is a holy man tells me he saw my boat coming up heavily laden in his sleep, which indicates a 'good let.' I hope my reverend friend is right. If you sell any of your things when you leave Egypt let me have some blankets for the boat; if she is let to a friendly dragoman he will supply all deficiencies out of his own canteen, but if to one 'who knows not Joseph' I fear many things will be demanded by rightminded British travellers, which must be left to the Reis's discretion to buy for them. I hope all the fattahs said for the success of the 'Urania's' voyage will produce a due effect. Here we rely a good deal on the favour of Abu-l-Hajjaj in such matters. The naivete with which people pray here for money is very amusing—though really I don't know why one shouldn't ask for one's daily sixpence as well as one's daily bread.

An idiot of a woman has written to me to get her a place as governess in an 'European or Arabian family in the neighbourhood of Thebes!' Considering she has been six years in Egypt as she says, she must be well fitted to teach. She had better learn to make gilleh and spin wool. The young Americans whom Mr. Hale sent were very nice. The Yankees are always the best bred and best educated travellers that I see here.



December 31, 1886: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, December 31, 1886.

DEAREST ALICK,

I meant to have sent you a long yarn by a steamer which went the other day, but I have been in my bed. The weather set in colder than I ever felt it here, and I have been very unwell for some time. Dr. Osman Ibraheem (a friend of mine, an elderly man who studied in Paris in Mohammed Ali's time) wants me to spend the summer up here and take sand baths, i.e. bury myself up to the chin in the hot sand, and to get a Dongola slave to rub me. A most fascinating derweesh from Esneh gave me the same advice; he wanted me to go and live near him at Esneh, and let him treat me. I wish you could see Sheykh Seleem, he is a sort of remnant of the Memlook Beys—a Circassian—who has inherited his master's property up at Esneh, and married his master's daughter. The master was one of the Beys, also a slave inheriting from his master. Well after being a terrible Shaitan (devil) after drink, women, etc. Seleem has repented and become a man of pilgrimage and prayer and perpetual fasting; but he has retained the exquisite grace and charm of manner which must have made him irresistible in his shaitan days, and also the beautifully delicate style of dress—a dove-coloured cloth sibbeh over a pale blue silk kuftan, a turban like a snow-drift, under which flowed the silky fair hair and beard, and the dainty white hands under the long muslin shirt sleeve made a picture; and such a smile, and such ready graceful talk. Sheykh Yussuf brought him to me as a sort of doctor, and also to try and convert me on one point. Some Christians had made Yussuf quite miserable, by telling him of the doctrine that all unbaptized infants went to eternal fire; and as he knew that I had lost a child very young, it weighed on his mind that perhaps I fretted about this, and so he said he could not refrain from trying to convince me that God was not so cruel and unjust as the Nazarene priests represented Him, and that all infants whatsoever, as well as all ignorant persons, were to be saved. 'Would that I could take the cruel error out of the minds of all the hundreds and thousands of poor Christian mothers who must be tortured by it,' said he, 'and let them understand that their dead babies are with Him who sent and who took them.' I own I did not resent this interference with my orthodoxy, especially as it is the only one I ever knew Yussuf attempt.

Dr. Osman is a lecturer in the Cairo school of medicine, a Shereef, and eminently a gentleman. He came up in the passenger steamer and called on me and spent all his spare time with me. I liked him better than the bewitching derweesh Seleem; he is so like my old love Don Quixote. He was amazed and delighted at what he heard here about me. 'Ah Madame, on vous aime comme une soeur, et on vous respecte comme une reine; cela rejouit le coeur des honnetes gens de voir tous les prejuges oublies et detruits a ce point.' We had no end of talk. Osman is the only Arab I know who has read a good deal of European literature and history and is able to draw comparisons. He said, 'Vous seule dans toute l'Egypte connaissez le peuple et comprenez ce qui se passe, tous les autres Europeens ne savent absolument rien que les dehors; il n'y a que vous qui ayez inspire la confiance qu'il faut pour connaitre la vente.' Of course this is between ourselves, I tell you, but I don't want to boast of the kind thoughts people have of me, simply because I am decently civil to them.

In Egypt we are eaten up with taxes; there is not a penny left to anyone. The taxes for the whole year eight months in advance have been levied, as far as they can be beaten out of the miserable people. I saw one of the poor dancing girls the other day, (there are three in Luxor) and she told me how cruel the new tax on them is. It is left to the discretion of the official who farms it to make each woman pay according to her presumed gains, i.e. her good looks, and thus the poor women are exposed to all the caprices and extortions of the police. This last new tax has excited more disgust than any. 'We now know the name of our ruler,' said a fellah who had just heard of it, 'he is Mawas Pasha.' I won't translate—but it is a terrible epithet when uttered in a tone which gives it the true meaning, though in a general way the commonest word of abuse to a donkey, or a boy, or any other cattle. The wages of prostitution are unclean, and this tax renders all Government salaries unlawful according to strict law. The capitation tax too, which was remitted for three years on the pasha's accession to the people of Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta and Rascheed, is now called for. Omar will have to pay about 8 pounds back tax, which he had fondly imagined himself excused from. You may conceive the distress this must cause among artisans, etc., who have spent their money and forgotten it, and feel cheated out of the blessings they then bestowed on the Pasha—as to that they will take out the change in curses.

There was a meeting here the other day of the Kadee, Sheykh el-Beled, and other notables to fix the amount of tax each man was to pay towards the increased police tax; and the old Shereef at the end spoke up, and said he had heard that one man had asked me to lend him money, and that he hoped such a thing would not happen again. Everyone knew I had had heavy expenses this year, and most likely had not much money; that my heart was soft, and that as everyone was in distress it would be 'breaking my head,' and in short that he should think it unmanly if anyone tried to trouble a lone woman with his troubles. I did offer one man 2 pounds that he might not be forced to run away to the desert, but he refused it and said, 'I had better go at once and rob out there, and not turn rogue towards thee—never could I repay it.' The people are running away in all directions.

When the Moolid of the Sheykh came the whole family Abu-l-Hajjaj could only raise six hundred and twenty piastres among them to buy the buffalo cow, which by custom—strong as the laws of the Medes and Persians—must be killed for the strangers who come; and a buffalo cow is worth one thousand piastres. So the stout old Shereef (aged 87) took his staff and the six hundred and twenty piastres, and sallied forth to walk to Erment and see what God would send them; and a charitable woman in Erment did give a buffalo cow for the six hundred and twenty piastres, and he drove her home the twenty miles rejoicing.

There has been a burglary over at Gourneh, an unheard-of event. Some men broke into the house of the Coptic gabit (tax-gatherer) and stole the money-box containing about sixty purses—over 150 pounds. The gabit came to me sick with the fright which gave him jaundice, and about eight men are gone in chains to Keneh on suspicion. Hajjee Baba too, a Turkish cawass, is awfully bilious; he says he is 'sick from beating men, and it's no use, you can't coin money on their backs and feet when they haven't a para in the world.' Altogether everyone is gloomy, and many desperate. I never saw the aspect of a population so changed.

January 1, 1867. God bless you, dearest Alick, and grant you many good years more. I must finish this to go to-morrow by the steamer. I would give a great deal to see you again, but when will that be?



January 12, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, January 12, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

Only two days ago I received letters from you of the 17 September and the 19 November. I wonder how many get lost and where? Janet gives me hopes of a visit of a few days in March and promises me a little terrier dog, whereat Omar is in raptures. I have made no plans at all, never having felt well enough to hope to be able to travel. The weather has changed for the better, and it is not at all old now; we shall see what the warmth does for me. You make my bowels yearn with your account of Rainie. If only we had Prince Achmet's carpet, and you could all come here for a few months.

We were greatly excited here last week; a boy was shot out in the sugar-cane field: he was with four Copts, and at first it looked ugly for the Copts. But the Maohn tells me he is convinced they are innocent, and that they only prevaricated from fear—it was robbers shot the poor child. What struck and surprised me in the affair was the excessive horror and consternation it produced; the Maohn had not had a murder in his district at all in eight years. The market-place was thronged with wailing women, Omar was sick all day, and the Maohn pale and wretched. The horror of killing seems greater here than ever I saw it. Palgrave says the same of the Arabian Arabs in his book: it is not one's notion of Oriental feeling, but a murder in England is taken quite as a joke compared with the scene here. I fear there will be robberies, owing to the distress, and the numbers who are running away from the land unable to pay their taxes. Don't fear for me, for I have two watchmen in the house every night—the regular guard and an amateur, a man whose boy I took down to Cairo to study in Gama'l Azhar.

Palgrave has written to Ross wanting Mabrook back. I am very sorry, the more so as Mabrook is recalcitrant. 'I want to stay with thee, I don't want to go back to the Nazarene.' A boy who heard him said, 'but the Lady is a Nazarene too;' whereupon Mabrook slapped his face with great vigour. He will be troublesome if he does turn restive, and he is one who can only be managed by kindness. He is as good and quiet as possible with us, but the stubborn will is there and he is too ignorant to be reasoned with.

January 14.—To-day the four Copts have again changed their story, and after swearing that the robbers were strangers, have accused a man who has shot birds for me all this winter: and the poor devil is gone to Keneh in chains. The weather seems to have set in steadily for fine. I hope soon to get out, but my donkey has grown old and shaky and I am too weak to walk, so I sit in the balcony.



January 14, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, January 14, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

We have had a very cold winter and I have been constantly ailing, luckily the cough has transferred itself from the night to the day, and I get some good sleep. The last two days have been much warmer and I hope matters will mend. I am beginning to take cod-liver oil, as we can't find a milch camel anywhere.

My boat has been well let in Cairo and is expected here every day. The gentlemen shoot, and tell the crew not to row, and in short take it easy, and give them 2 pounds in every place. Imagine what luxury for my crew. I shall have to dismiss the lot, they will be so spoilt. The English Consul-General came up in a steamer with Dr. Patterson and Mr. Francis. I dined with them one day; I wish you could have seen me carried in my armchair high up on the shoulders of four men, like a successful candidate, or more like one of the Pharaohs in an ancient bas-relief, preceded by torch bearers and other attendants and followers, my procession was quite regal. I wish I could show you a new friend of mine, Osman Ibraheem, who studied medicine five years in Paris. My heart warmed to him directly, because like most high-bred Arabs, he is so like Don Quixote—only Don Quixote quite in his senses. The sort of innocent sententiousness, and perfectly natural love of fine language and fine sentiments is unattainable to any European, except, I suppose, a Spaniard. It is quite unlike Italian fustian or French sentiment. I suppose to most Europeans it is ridiculous, but I used to cry when the carriers beat the most noble of all knights, when I was a little girl and read Don Quixote; and now I felt as it were like Sancho, when I listened to Osman reciting bits of heroic poetry, or uttering 'wise saws' and 'modern instances,' with the peculiar mixture of strong sense of 'exultation' which stamps the great Don. I may not repeat all I heard from him of the state of things here, and the insults he had to endure—a Shereef and an educated man—from coarse Turkish Pashas; it was the carriers over again. He told me he had often cried like a woman, at night in his own room, at the miseries he was forced to witness and could do nothing to relieve; all the men I have particularly liked I find are more or less pupils of the Sheykh el-Bagooree now dead, who seems to have had a gift of inspiring honourable feeling. Our good Maohn is one; he is no conjuror, but the honesty and goodness are heroic which lead a man to starve on 15 pounds a month, when he is expected to grow rich on plunder.

The war in Crete saddens many a household here. Sheykh Yussuf's brother, Sheykh Yooris, is serving there, and many more. People are actually beginning to say 'We hope the English and French won't fight for the Sultan if the Moscovites want to eat him—there will be no good for us till the Turks are driven out.' All the old religious devotion to the Sultan seems quite gone.

Poor Mustapha has been very unwell and I stopped his Ramadan, gave him some physic and ordered him not to fast, for which I think he is rather grateful. The Imaam and Mufti always endorse my prohibitions of fasting to my patients. Old Ismaeen is dead, aged over a hundred; he served Belzoni, and when he grew doting was always wanting me to go with him to join Belzoni at Abu Simbel. He was not at all ill—he only went out like a candle. His grandson brought me a bit of the meat cooked at his funeral, and begged me to eat it, that I might live to be very old, according to the superstition here. When they killed the buffalo for the Sheykh Abu-l-Hajjaj, the man who had a right to the feet kindly gave them to Omar, who wanted to make calves' foot jelly for me. I had a sort of profane feeling, as if I were eating a descendant of the bull Apis.

I am reading Mme. du Deffand's letters. What a repulsive picture of a woman. I don't know which I dislike most, Horace Walpole or herself: the conflict of selfishness, vanity and ennui disguised as sentiment is quite hateful: to her Turgot was un sot animal,—so much for her great gifts.

Remember me kindly to William and tell him how much I wish I could see his 'improvements,' Omar also desires his salaam to him, having a sort of fellow feeling for your faithful henchman. I need not say he kisses your hand most dutifully.



January 22, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, January 22, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

The weather has been lovely, for the last week, and I am therefore somewhat better. My boat arrived to-day, with all the men in high good-humour, and Omar tells me all is in good order, only the people in Cairo gave her the evil eye, and broke the iron part of the rudder which had to be repaired at Benisouef. Mr. Lear has been here the last few days, and is just going up to the second cataract; he has done a little drawing of my house for you—a new view of it. He is a pleasant man and I was glad to see him.

[Picture: Lady Duff Gordon, from oil portrait by Henry W. Phillips, about 1851]

Such a queer fellow came here the other day—a tall stalwart Holsteiner, I should think a man of fifty, who has been four years up in the Soudan and Sennaar, and being penniless, had walked all through Nubia begging his way. He was not the least 'down upon his luck' and spoke with enthusiasm of the hospitality and kindness of Sir Samuel Baker's 'tigers.' Ja, das sind die rechten Kerls, dass ist das gluckliche Leben. His account is that if you go with an armed party, the blacks naturally show fight, as men with guns, in their eyes, are always slave hunters; but if you go alone and poor, they kill an ox for you, unless you prefer a sheep, give you a hut, and generally anything they have to offer, merissey (beer) to make you as drunk as a lord, and young ladies to pour it out for you—and—you need not wear any clothes. If you had heard him you would have started for the interior at once. I gave him a dinner and a bottle of common wine, which he emptied, and a few shillings, and away he trudged merrily towards Cairo. I wonder what the Nubians thought of a howagah begging. He said they were all kind, and that he was sure he often ate what they pinched themselves to give—dourrah bread and dates.

In the evening we were talking about this man's stories, and of 'anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow' to a prodigious height, by means of an edifice woven of their own hair, and other queer things, when Hassan told me a story which pleased me particularly. 'My father,' said he, 'Sheykh Mohammed (who was a taller and handsomer man than I am), was once travelling very far up in the black country, and he and the men he was with had very little to eat, and had killed nothing for many days; presently they heard a sort of wailing from a hole in the rock, and some of the men went in and dragged out a creature—I know not, and my father knew not, whether a child of Adam or a beast. But it was like a very foul and ill-shaped woman, and had six toes on its feet. The men wished to slay it, according to the law declaring it to be a beast and lawful food, but when it saw the knife, it cried sadly and covered its face with its hands in terror, and my father said, 'By the Most High God, ye shall not slay the poor woman-beast which thus begs its life; I tell you it is unlawful to eat one so like the children of Adam.' And the beast or woman clung to him and hid under his cloak; and my father carried her for some time behind him on his horse, until they saw some creatures like her, and then he sent her to them, but he had to drive her from him by force, for she clung to him. Thinkest thou oh Lady, it was really a beast, or some sort of the children of Adam?'

'God knows, and He only,' said I piously, 'but by His indulgent name, thy father, oh Sheykh, was a true nobleman.' Sheykh Yussuf chimed in and gave a decided opinion that a creature able to understand the sight of the knife and to act so, was not lawful to kill for food. You see what a real Arab Don Quixote was. It is a picture worthy of him,—the tall, noble-looking Abab'deh sheltering the poor 'woman-beast,' most likely a gorilla or chimpanzee, and carrying her en croupe.



January 26, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, January 26, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I must betray dear Sheykh Yussuf's confidence, and tell you his love story.

A young fellow ran away with a girl he loved a short time ago, she having told him that her parents wanted to marry her to another, and that she would go to such a spot for water, and he must come on a horse, beat her and carry her off (the beating saves the maiden's blushes). Well, the lad did it, and carried her to Salamieh where they were married, and then they went to Sheykh Yussuf to get him to conciliate the family, which he did. He told me the affair, and I saw he sympathized much with the runaways. 'Ah,' he said 'Lady, it is love, and that is terrible, I can tell thee love is dreadful indeed to bear.' Then he hesitated and blushed, and went on, 'I felt it once, Lady, it was the will of God that I should love her who is now my wife. Thirteen years ago I loved her and wished to marry her, but my father, and her grandfather my uncle the Shereef, had quarrelled, and they took her and married her to another man. I never told anyone of it, but my liver was burning and my heart ready to burst for three years; but when I met her I fixed my eyes on the ground for fear she should see my love, and I said to myself, Oh Yussuf, God has afflicted thee, praise be unto Him, do thou remember thy blood (Shereef) and let thy conduct be that of the Beni Azra who when they are thus afflicted die rather than sin, for they have the strongest passion of love and the greatest honour. And I did not die but went to Cairo to the Gama el-Azhar and studied, and afterwards I married twice, as thou knowest, but I never loved any but that one, and when my last wife died the husband of this one had just divorced her to take a younger and prettier one and my father desired me then to take her, but I was half afraid not knowing whether she would love me; but, Praise be to God I consented, and behold, poor thing, she also had loved me in like manner.' I thought when I went to see her that she was unusually radiant with new-married happiness, and she talked of 'el-Sheykh' with singular pride and delight, and embraced me and called me 'mother' most affectionately. Is it not a pretty piece of regular Arab romance like Ghamem?

My boat has gone up to-day with two very nice Englishmen in her. Their young Maltese dragoman, aged twenty-four, told me his father often talked of 'the Commissioners' and all they had done, and how things were changed in the island for the better. (1) Everything spiritual and temporal has been done for the boat's safety in the Cataract—urgent letters to the Maohn el Baudar, and him of Assouan to see to the men, and plenty of prayers and vows to Abu-l-Hajjaj on behalf of the 'property of the Lady,' or kurzweg 'our boat' as she is commonly called in Luxor.

Here we have the other side of the misery of the Candian business; in Europe, of course, the obvious thing is the sufferings of the Cretans, but really I am more sorry for the poor fellah lads who are dragged away to fight in a quarrel they had no hand in raising, and with which they have no sympathy. The Times suggests that the Sultan should relinquish the island, and that has been said in many an Egyptian hut long before. The Sultan is worn out, and the Muslims here know it, and say it would be the best day for the Arabs if he were driven out; that after all a Turk never was the true Ameer el-Moomeneen (Commander of the Faithful). Only in Europe people talk and write as if it were all Muslim versus Christian, and the Christians were all oppressed, and the Muslims all oppressors. I wish they could see the domineering of the Greeks and Maltese as Christians. The Englishman domineers as a free man and a Briton, which is different, and that is the reason why the Arabs wish for English rule, and would dread that of Eastern Christians. Well they may; for if ever the Greeks do reign in Stamboul the sufferings of the Muslims will satisfy the most eager fanatic that ever cursed Mahound. I know nothing of Turkey, but I have seen and heard enough to know that there are plenty of other divisions besides that of Christian and Muslim. Here in Egypt it is clear enough: it is Arab versus Turk and the Copt siding with the stronger for his interest, while he rather sympathizes with his brother fellah. At all events the Copt don't want other Christians to get power; he would far rather have a Muslim than a heretic ruler, above all the hated Greek. The Englishman he looks on as a variety of Muslim—a man who washes, has no pictures in his church, who has married bishops, and above all, who does not fast from all that has life for half the year, and this heresy is so extreme as not to give offence, unless he tries to convert.

The Pasha's sons have just been up the river: they ordered a reading of the Koran at the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj and gave every Alim sixpence. We have not left off chaffing (as Maurice would say) Sheykh Allah-ud-deen, the Muezzin, and sundry others on this superb backsheesh, and one old Fikee never knows whether to laugh, to cry, or to scold, when I ask to see the shawl and tarboosh he has bought with the presents of Pashas. Yussuf and the Kadee too had been called on to contribute baskets of bread to the steamer so that their sixpences were particularly absurd.

The little boy whose father died is still with the Abab'deh, who will not let him travel to Cairo till the weather is warmer and they find a safe person to be kind to him. Rachmeh says 'Please God, he will go with the Sitt, perhaps.' Hassan has consoled him with sugar-cane and indulgence, and if I lose Mabrook, and the little boy takes to me, he may fall into my hands as Achmet has done. I hear he is a good boy but a perfect savage; that however, I find makes no difference—in fact, I think they learn faster than those who have ways of their own. So I see Terence was a nigger! I would tell Rachmeh so if I could make him understand who Terence was, and that he, Rachmeh, stood in need of any encouragement, but the worthy fellow never imagines that his skin is in any way inferior to mine.



February 3, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, February 3, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

The boat goes down to-morrow and I have little to add to Mutter's letter, only that I am better.

There is a man here from Girgeh, who says he is married to a Ginneeyeh (fairy) princess. I have asked to be presented to her, but I suspect there will be some hitch about it. It will be like Alexis's Allez, Madame, vous etes trop incredule. {334} The unintelligible thing is the motive which prompts wonders and miracles here, seeing that the wonder workers do not get any money by it; and indeed, very often give, like the Indian saint I told you of who gave me four dollars. His miracles were all gratis, which was the most miraculous thing of all in a saint. I am promised that the Ginneeyeh shall come through the wall. If she should do so I shall be compelled to believe in her, as there are no mechanical contrivances in Luxor. All the Hareem here believe it, and the man's human wife swears she waits on her like a slave, and backs her husband's lie or delusion fully. I have not seen the man, but I should not wonder if it were a delusion—real bona fide visions and revelations are so common, and I think there is but little downright imposture. Meanwhile familiarity breeds contempt. Jinns, Afreets and Shaitans inspire far less respect than the stupidest ghost at home, and the devil (Iblees) is reduced to deplorable insignificance. He is never mentioned in the pulpit, or in religious conversation, with the respect he enjoys in Christian countries. I suppose we may console ourselves with the hope that he will pay off the Muslims for their neglect of him hereafter.

I cannot describe to you the misery here now, indeed it is wearisome even to think of: every day some new tax. Now every beast; camel, cow, sheep, donkey, horse, is made to pay. The fellaheen can no longer eat bread, they are living on barley meal, mixed with water and new green stuff, vetches etc., which to people used to good food is terrible, and I see all my acquaintances growing seedy and ragged and anxious. Yussuf is clear of debt, his religion having kept him from borrowing, but he wants to sell his little slave girl, and has sold his donkey, and he is the best off. The taxation makes life almost impossible—100 piastres per feddan, a tax on every crop, on every annual fruit, and again when it is sold in the market; on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt, on the dancing girls. I wonder I am not tormented for money—not above three people have tried to beg or borrow.

Thanks for the Westminster epilogue; it always amuses me much. So Terence was a nigger. There is no trace of the negro 'boy' in his Davus. My nigger has grown huge, and has developed a voice of thunder. He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage. I shall be sorry when Palgrave takes him. I am tempted to buy Yussuf's nice little Dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular hareem. In the boat Achmet is enough under Omar; but in this large dusty house, and with errands to run, and comers and goers to look after, pipes and coffee and the like, it takes two boys to be comfortable. Mabrook too washes very well. It is surprising how fast the boys learn, and how well they do their work. Achmet, who is quite little, would be a perfectly sufficient servant for a man alone; he can cook, wash, clean the rooms, make the beds, do all the table service, knife and plate cleaning, all fairly well, and I believe now he would get along even without Omar's orders. Mabrook is slower, but he has the same merit our poor Hassan had, {336} he never forgets what he has been once told to do, and he is clean in his work, though hopelessly dirty as to his clothes. He cannot get used to them, and takes a roll in the dust, or leans against a dirty wall, oblivious of his clean-washed blue shirt. Achmet is quicker and more careless, but they both are good boys and very fond of Omar. 'Uncle Omar' is the form of address, though he scolds them pretty severely if they misbehave; and I observe that the high jinks take place chiefly when only I am in the way, and Omar gone to market or to the mosque. The little rogues have found out that their laughing does not 'affect my nerves,' and I am often treated to a share in the joke. How I wish Rainie could see the children: they would amuse her. Yussuf's girl, 'Meer en Nezzil,' is a charming child, and very clever; her emphatic way of explaining everything to me, and her gestures, would delight you. Her cousin and future husband, age five (she is six), broke the doll which I had given her, and her description of it was most dramatic, ending with a wheedling glance at the cupboard and 'of course there are no more dolls there; oh no, no more.' She is a fine little creature, far more Arab than fellaha; quite a Shaitan, her father says. She came in full of making cakes for Bairam, and offered her services; 'Oh my aunt, if thou wantest anything I can work,' said she, tucking up her sleeves.



March 6, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, March 6, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

The warm weather has set in, and I am already as much the better for it as usual. I had a slight attack, not nearly so bad as that at Soden, but it lingered and I kept my bed as a measure of precaution. Dear Yussuf was with me the evening I was attacked, and sat up all night to give me my medicine every hour. At the prayer of dawn, an hour and a half before sunrise, I heard his supplications for my life and health, and for you and all my family; and I thought of what I had lately read, how the Greeks massacred their own patriots because the Turks had shown them mercy—a display of temper which I hope will enlighten Western Christendom as to what the Muslims have to expect, if they (the Western Christians) help the Eastern Christians to get the upper hand. Yussuf was asking about a lady the other day who has turned Catholic. 'Poor thing,' said he, 'the priests have drawn out her brains through her ears, no doubt: but never fear, her heart is good and her charity is great, and God will not deal hardly with those who serve Him with their hearts, though it is sad she should bow down before images. But look at thy slave Mabrook, can he understand one hundredth part of the thoughts of thy mind? Never-the-less he loves thee, and obeys thee with pleasure and alacrity; and wilt thou punish him because he knows not all thy ways? And shall God, who is so much higher above us as thou art above thy slave, be less just than thou?' I pinned him at once, and insisted on knowing the orthodox belief; but he quoted the Koran and the decisions of the Ulema to show that he stretched no point as far as Jews and Christians are concerned, and even that idolaters are not to be condemned by man. Yussuf wants me to write a short account of the faith from his dictation. Would anyone publish it? It annoys him terribly to hear the Muslims constantly accused of intolerance, and he is right—it is not true. They show their conviction that their faith is the best in the world with the same sort of naivete that I have seen in very innocent and ignorant English women; in fact, display a sort of religious conceit; but it is not often bitter or haineux, however much they are in earnest.

I am going to write to Palgrave and ask him to let me send another boy or the money for Mabrook, who can't endure the notion of leaving me. Achmet, who was always hankering after the fleshpots of Alexandria, got some people belonging to the boats to promise to take him, and came home and picked a quarrel and departed. Poor little chap; the Sheykh el-Beled 'put a spoke in his wheel' by informing him he would be wanted for the Pasha's works and must stay in his own place. Since he went Mabrook has come out wonderfully and does his own work and Achmet's with the greatest satisfaction. He tells me he likes it best so; he likes to be quiet. He just suits me and I him, it is humiliating to find how much more I am to the taste of savages than of the 'polite circles.'

The old lady of the Maohn proposed to come to me, but I would not let her leave her home, which would be quite an adventure to her. I knew she would be exclamatory, and lament over me, and say every minute, 'Oh my liver. Oh my eyes! The name of God be upon thee, and never mind! to-morrow please God, thou wilt be quite well,' and so forth. People send me such odd dishes, some very good. Yussuf's wife packed two calves' feet tight in a little black earthern pan, with a seasoning of herbs, and baked it in the bread oven, and the result was excellent. Also she made me a sort of small macaroni, extremely good. Now too we can get milk again, and Omar makes kishta, alias clotted cream.

Do send me a good edition of the 'Arabian Nights' in Arabic, and I should much like to give Yussuf Lane's Arabic dictionary. He is very anxious to have it. I can't read the 'Arabian Nights,' but it is a favourite amusement to make one of the party read aloud; a stray copy of 'Kamar ez-Zeman and Sitt Boodoora' went all round Luxor, and was much coveted for the village soirees. But its owner departed, and left us to mourn over the loss of his MSS.

I must tell you a black standard of respectability (it is quite equal to the English one of the gig, or the ham for breakfast). I was taking counsel with my friend Rachmeh, a negro, about Mabrook, and he urged me to buy him of Palgrave, because he saw that the lad really loved me. 'Moreover,' he said, 'the boy is of a respectable family, for he told me his mother wore a cow's tail down to her heels (that and a girdle to which the tail is fastened, and a tiny leathern apron in front, constituted her whole wardrobe), and that she beat him well when he told lies or stole his neighbours eggs.' Poor woman; I wish this abominable slave trade had spared her and her boy. What folly it is to stop the Circassian slave trade, if it is stopped, and to leave this. The Circassians take their own children to market, as a way of providing for them handsomely, and both boys and girls like being sold to the rich Turks; but the blacks and Abyssinians fight hard for their own liberty and that of their cubs. Mabrook swears that there were two Europeans in the party which attacked his village and killed he knew not how many, and carried him and others off. He was not stolen by Arabs, or by Barrabias, like Hassan, but taken in war from his home by the seaside, a place called Bookee, and carried in a ship to Jedda, and thence back to Koseir and Keneh, where Palgrave bought him. I must say that once here the slaves are happy and well off, but the waste of life and the misery caused by the trade must be immense. The slaves are coming down the river by hundreds every week, and are very cheap—twelve to twenty pounds for a fine boy, and nine pounds and upwards for a girl. I heard that the last gellab offered a woman and baby for anything anyone would give for them, on account of the trouble of the baby. By-the-bye, Mabrook displays the negro talent for babies. Now that Achmet is gone, who scolded them and drove them out, Mohammed's children, quite babies, are for ever trotting after 'Maboo,' as they pronounce his name, and he talks incessantly to them. It reminds me so of Janet and poor Hassan, but Mabrook is not like Hassan, he is one of the sons of Anak, and already as big and strong as a man, with the most prodigious chest and limbs.

Don't be at all uneasy about me as to care. Omar knows exactly what to do as he showed the other day when I was taken ill. I had shown him the medicines and given him instructions so I had not even to speak, and if I were to be ill enough to want more help, Yussuf would always sit up alternate nights; but it is not necessary. Arabs make no grievance about broken rest; they don't 'go to bed properly,' but lie down half dressed, and have a happy faculty of sleeping at odd times and anyhow, which enables them to wait on one day and night, without distressing themselves as it distresses us.

Thursday.—A telegram has just come announcing that Janet will leave Cairo to-morrow in a steamer, and therefore be here, Inshallah, this day week. I enclose a note from a Copt boy, which will amuse you. He is 'sapping' at English, and I teach him whenever I am able. I am a special favourite with all the young lads; they must not talk much before grown men, so they come and sit on the floor round my feet, and ask questions and advice, and enjoy themselves amazingly. Hobble-de-hoy-hood is very different here from what it is with us; they care earlier for the affairs of the grown-up world, and are more curious and more polished, but lack the fine animal gaiety of our boys. The girls are much more gamin than the boys, and more romping and joyous.

It is very warm now. I fear Janet will sigh terribly over the heat. They have left their voyage too late for such as do not love the Shems el-Kebeer (the big sun), which has just begun. I who worship Ammun Ra, love to feel him in his glory. It is long since I had any letters, I want so to hear how you all are.



March 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

March 7, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have written a long yarn to Mutter and am rather tired, so I only write to say I am much better. The heat has set in, and, of course with it my health has mended, but I am a little shaky and afraid to tire myself. Moreover I want to nurse up and be stronger by next Thursday when Janet and Ross are expected.

What a queer old fish your Dublin antiquary is, who wants to whitewash Miss Rhampsinitus, and to identify her with the beloved of Solomon (or Saleem); my brain spun round as I read it. Must I answer him, or will you? A dragoman gave me an old broken travelling arm-chair, and Yussuf sat in an arm-chair for the first time in his life. 'May the soul of the man who made it find a seat in Paradise,' was his exclamation, which strikes me as singularly appropriate on sitting in a very comfortable armchair. Yussuf was thankful for small mercies in this case.

I am afraid Janet may be bored by all the people's civility; they will insist on making great dinners and fantasias for her I am sure. I hope they will go on to Assouan and take me with them; the change will do me good, and I should like to see as much of her as I can before she leaves Egypt for good.

The state of business here is curious. The last regulations have stopped all money lending, and the prisons are full of Sheykh el-Beled whose villages can't pay the taxes. Most respectable men have offered me to go partners with them now in their wheat, which will be cut in six weeks, if only I would pay their present taxes, I to take half the crop and half the taxes, with interest out of their half—some such trifle as 30 per cent, per month. Our prison is full of men, and we send them their dinner a tour de role. The other day a woman went with a big wooden bowl on her head, full of what she had cooked for them, accompanied by her husband. One Khaleel Effendi, a new vakeel here, was there, and said, 'What dost thou ask here thou harlot?' Her husband answered, 'That is no harlot, oh Effendim, but my wife.' Whereupon he was beaten till he fainted, and then there was a lamentation; they carried him down past my house, with a crowd of women all shrieking like mad creatures, especially his wife, who yelled and beat her head and threw dust over it, more majorum, as you see in the tombs. The humours of tax-gathering in this country are quite impayable you perceive—and ought to be set forth on the escutcheon of the new Knight of the Bath whom the Queen hath delighted to honour. Cawass battant, Fellah rampant, and Fellaha pleurant would be the proper blazon. Distress in England is terrible, but, at least, it is not the result of extortion, as it is here, where everything from nature is so abundant and glorious, and yet mankind so miserable. It is not a little hunger, it is the cruel oppression which maddens the people now. They never complained before, but now whole villages are deserted. The boat goes to-morrow morning so I must say goodbye.



April 12, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, April 12, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have just received your letters, including the one for Omar which I read to him, and which he kissed and said he should keep as a hegab (talisman). I have given him an order on Coutts' correspondents for the money, in case I die. Omar proposes to wait till we get to Cairo and then to buy a little house, or a floor in one. I am to keep all the money till the house is found, so he will in no way be tempted to do anything foolish with it. I hope you approve?

Janet's visit was quite an Eed (festival), as the people said. When I got up on the morning she was expected, I found the house decked with palm branches and lemon blossoms, and the holy flags of Abu-l-Hajjaj waving over my balcony. The mosque people had brought them, saying all the people were happy to-day, because it was a fortunate day for me. I suppose if I had had a mind to testify, I ought to have indignantly torn down the banners which bore the declaration, 'There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' But it appeared to me that if Imaams and Muezzins could send their banners to decorate a Christian house, the Christian might manage to endure the kindness. Then there was fantasia on horseback, and all the notables to meet the boat, and general welcome and jubilation. Next day I went on with Henry and Janet in the steamer, and had a very pleasant time to Assouan and back, and they stayed another day here, and I hired a little dahabieh which they towed down to Keneh where they stayed a day; after which Sheykh Yussuf and I sailed back again to Luxor. As bad luck would have it we had hot weather just the week they were up here: since then it has been quite cool.

Janet has left me her little black and tan terrier, a very nice little dog, but I can't hope to rival Omar in his affections. He sleeps in Omar's bosom, and Omar spoils and pets him all day, and boasts to the people how the dog drinks tea and coffee and eats dainty food, and the people say Mashallah! whereas I should have expected them to curse the dog's father. The other day a scrupulous person drew back with an air of alarm from Bob's approach, whereupon the dog stared at him, and forthwith plunged into Sheykh Yussuf's lap, from which stronghold he 'yapped' defiance at whoever should object to him. I never laughed more heartily, and Yussuf went into fou rire. The mouth of the dog only is unclean, and Yussuf declares he is a very well-educated dog, and does not attempt to lick; he pets him accordingly, and gives him tea in his own saucer, only not in the cup.

I am to inherit another little blackie from Ross's agency at Keneh: the funniest little chap. I cannot think why I go on expecting so-called savages to be different from other people. Mabrook's simple talk about his village, and the animals and the victuals; and how the men of a neighbouring village stole him in order to sell him for a gun (the price of a gun is a boy), but were prevented by a razzia of Turks, etc. who killed the first aggressors and took all the children—all this he tells just as an English boy might tell of bird-nesting—delights me. He has the same general notion of right and wrong; and yet his tribe know neither bread nor any sort of clothes, nor cheese nor butter, nor even drink milk, nor the African beer; and it always rains there, and is always deadly cold at night, so that without a fire they would die. They have two products of civilization—guns and tobacco, for which they pay in boys and girls, whom they steal. I wonder where the country is, it is called Sowaghli, and the next people are Mueseh, on the sea-coast, and it is not so hot as Egypt. It must be in the southern hemisphere. The new negrillon is from Darfoor. Won't Maurice be amused by his attendants, the Darfoor boy will trot after him, as he can shoot and clean guns, tiny as he is Maurice seems to wish to come and I hope Alexander will let him spend the winter here, and I will take him up to the second Cataract; I really think he would enjoy it.

My boat will not return I think for another six weeks. Mr. Eaton and Mr. Baird were such nice people! their dragoman, a Maltese, appeared to hate the Italians with ferocity. He said all decent people in Malta would ten times rather belong to the Mahommedans than to the Italians—after all blood tells. He was a very respectable young man, and being a dragoman and the son of a dragoman, he has seen the world, and particularly the Muslims. I suppose it is the Pope that makes the Italians so hateful to them.

The post here is dreadful, I would not mind their reading one's letters if they would only send them on. Omar begs we to say that he and his children will pray for you all his life, please God, not for the money only but still more for the good words and the trusting him. But he says, 'I can't say much politikeh, Please God she shall see, only I kiss her hand now.' You will hear from Janet about her excursion. What I liked best was shooting the Cataract in a small boat; it was fine fantasia.