Chapter IV: Part 4

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.

At Benisouef, which used to be the great cattle place, not a buffalo was left, and we could not get a drop of milk. But since we left Minieh we see them again, and I hear the disease is not spreading up the river. Omar told me that the poor people at Benisouef were complaining of the drought and prospect of scarcity, as they could no longer water the land for want of oxen. I paid ten napoleons passage-money, and shall give four or five more as backsheesh, as I have given a good deal of trouble with all my luggage, beddings, furniture, provisions for four months, etc., and the boat's people have been more than civil, really kind and attentive to us; but a bad dahabieh would have cost forty, so I am greatly the gainer. Nothing can exceed the muddle, uncertainty and carelessness of the 'administration' at Cairo: no coals at the depots, boats announced to sail and dawdling on three weeks, no order and no care for anybody's convenience but the Pasha's own. But the subordinates on board the boats do their work perfectly well. We go only half as quickly as we ought because we have two very heavy dahabiehs in tow instead of one; but no time is lost, as long as the light lasts we go, and start again as soon as the moon rises. The people on board have promoted me in rank--and call me 'el-Ameereh,' an obsolete Arab title which the engineer thinks is the equivalent of 'Ladysheep,' as he calls it. 'Sitti,' he said, was the same as 'Meessees.' I don't know how he acquired his ideas on the subject of English precedence.

Omar has just come in with coffee, and begs me to give his best salaam to his big master and his little master and lady, and not to forget to tell them he is their servant and my memlook (slave) 'from one hand to the other' (the whole body). If we stay at all at Siout, I will ride a donkey up to Wassef's house, and leave this letter for him to send down with his next opportunity to Cairo. At Keneh we must try to find time to buy two filters and some gullehs (water-coolers); they are made there. At Thebes nothing can be got.

How I do wish you were here to enjoy all the new and strange sights! I am sure it would amuse you, and as the fleas don't bite you there would be no drawback. Janet sent me a photo of dear little Rainie; it is ugly, but very like the 'zuweyeh' (little one). Give her no end of kisses, and thank her for the cock robin, which pleased me quite as much as she thought it would.

January 5, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

_Tuesday_, _January_ 5, 1864.

We left Siout this afternoon. The captain had announced that we should start at ten o'clock, so I did not go into the town, but sent Omar to buy food and give my letter and best salaam to Wassef. But the men of Darfoor all went off declaring that they would stop, promising to cut off the captain's head if he went without them. Hassan Effendi, the Turk, was furious, and threatened to telegraph his complaints to Cairo if we did not go directly, and the poor captain was in a sad quandary. He appealed to me, peaceably sitting on the trunk of a palm-tree with some poor _fellaheen_ (of whom more anon). I uttered the longest sentence I could compose in Arabic, to the effect that he was captain, and that while on the boat we were all bound to obey him. '_Mashallah_! one English Hareem is worth more than ten men for sense; these Ingeleez have only one word both for themselves and for other people: _doghree_--_doghree_ (right is right); this Ameereh is ready to obey like a memlook, and when she has to command--whew!'--with a most expressive toss back of the head. The bank was crowded with poor _fellaheen_ who had been taken for soldiers and sent to await the Pasha's arrival at Girgeh; three weeks they lay there, and were then sent down to Soohaj (the Pasha wanted to see them himself and pick out the men he liked); eight days more at Soohaj, then to Siout eight days more, and meanwhile Ismail Pasha has gone back to Cairo and the poor souls may wait indefinitely, for no one will venture to remind the Pasha of their trifling existence. _Wallah_, _wallah_!

While I was walking on the bank with M. and Mme. Mounier, a person came up and saluted them whose appearance puzzled me. Don't call me a Persian when I tell you it was an eccentric Bedawee young lady. She was eighteen or twenty at most, dressed like a young man, but small and feminine and rather pretty, except that one eye was blind. Her dress was handsome, and she had women's jewels, diamonds, etc., and a European watch and chain. Her manner was excellent, quite _ungenirt_, and not the least impudent or swaggering, and I was told--indeed, I could hear--that her language was beautiful, a thing much esteemed among Arabs. She is a virgin and fond of travelling and of men's society, being very clever, so she has her dromedary and goes about quite alone. No one seemed surprised, no one stared, and when I asked if it was _proper_, our captain was surprised. 'Why not? if she does not wish to marry, she can go alone; if she does, she can marry--what harm? She is a virgin and free.' She went to breakfast with the Mouniers on their boat (Mme. M. is Egyptian born, and both speak Arabic perfectly), and the young lady had many things to ask them, she said. She expressed her opinions pretty freely as far as I could understand her. Mme. Mounier had heard of her before, and said she was much respected and admired. M. Mounier had heard that she was a spy of the Pasha's, but the people on board the boat here say that the truth was that she went before Said Pasha herself to complain of some tyrannical Moodir who ground and imprisoned the _fellaheen_--a bold thing for a girl to do. To me she seems, anyhow, far the most curious thing I have yet seen.

The weather is already much warmer, it is nine in the evening, we are steaming along and I sit with the cabin window open. My cough is, of course, a great deal better. _Inshallah_! Above Keneh (about another 150 miles) it will go away. To-day, for the first time, I pulled my cloak over my head in the sun, it was so stinging hot--quite delicious, and it is the 5th of January. _Poveri voi_ in the cold! Our captain was prisoner for three years at Moscow and at Bakshi Serai, and declares he never saw the sun at all--hard lines for an Egyptian. Do you remember the cigarettes you bought for me at Eaux Bonnes? Well, I gave them to the old Turkish Effendi, who is dreadfully asthmatic, and he is enchanted; of course five other people came to be cured directly. The rhubarb pills are a real comfort to travellers, for they can't do much harm, and inspire great confidence.

Luckily we left all the fleas behind in the fore-cabin, for the benefit of the poor old Turk, who, I hear, suffers severely. The divans were all brand-new, and the fleas came in the cotton stuffing, for there are no live things of any sort in the rest of the boat.

GIRGEH,
_January_ 9, 1864.

We have put in here for the night. To-day we took on board three convicts in chains, two bound for Fazogloo, one for calumny and perjury, and one for manslaughter. Hard labour for life in that climate will soon dispose of them. The third is a petty thief from Keneh who has been a year in chains in the Custom-house of Alexandria, and is now being taken back to be shown in his own place in his chains. The _causes celebres_ of this country would be curious reading; they do their crimes so differently to us. If I can get hold of anyone who can relate a few cases well, I'll write them down. Omar has told me a few, but he may not know the details quite exactly.

I made further inquiries about the Bedawee lady, who is older than she looks, for she has travelled constantly for ten years. She is rich and much respected, and received in all the best houses, where she sits with the men all day and sleeps in the hareem. She has been in the interior of Africa and to Mecca, speaks Turkish, and M. Mounier says he found her extremely agreeable, full of interesting information about all the countries she had visited. As soon as I can talk I must try and find her out; she likes the company of Europeans.

Here is a contribution to folk-lore, new even to Lane I think. When the coffee-seller lights his stove in the morning, he makes two cups of coffee of the best and nicely sugared, and pours them out all over the stove, saying, 'God bless or favour Sheykh Shadhilee and his descendants.' The blessing on the saint who invented coffee of course I knew, and often utter, but the libation is new to me. You see the ancient religion crops up even through the severe faith of Islam. If I could describe all the details of an Arab, and still more of a Coptic, wedding, you would think I was relating the mysteries of Isis. At one house I saw the bride's father looking pale and anxious, and Omar said, 'I think he wants to hold his stomach with both hands till the women tell him if his daughter makes his face white.' It was such a good phrase for the sinking at heart of anxiety. It certainly seems more reasonable that a woman's misconduct should blacken her father's face than her husband's. There are a good many things about hareem here which I am barbarian enough to think extremely good and rational. An old Turk of Cairo, who had been in Europe, was talking to an Englishman a short time ago, who politely chaffed him about Mussulman license. The venerable Muslim replied, 'Pray, how many women have you, who are quite young, seen (that is the Eastern phrase) in your whole life?' The Englishman could not count--of course not. 'Well, young man, I am old, and was married at twelve, and I have seen in all my life seven women; four are dead, and three are happy and comfortable in my house. _Where are all yours_?' Hassaneyn Effendi heard the conversation, which passed in French, and was amused at the question.

I find that the criminal convicted of calumny accused, together with twenty-nine others not in custody, the Sheykh-el-Beled of his place of murdering his servant, and produced a basket full of bones as proof, but the Sheykh-el-Beled produced the living man, and his detractor gets hard labour for life. The proceeding is characteristic of the childish _ruses_ of this country. I inquired whether the thief who was dragged in chains through the streets would be able to find work, and was told, 'Oh, certainly; is he not a poor man? For the sake of God everyone will be ready to help him.' An absolute uncertainty of justice naturally leads to this result. Our captain was quite shocked to hear that in my country we did not like to employ a returned convict.

LUXOR,
_January_ 13, 1864.

We spent all the afternoon of Saturday at Keneh, where I dined with the English Consul, a worthy old Arab, who also invited our captain, and we all sat round his copper tray on the floor and ate with our fingers, the captain, who sat next me, picking out the best bits and feeding me and Sally with them. After dinner the French Consul, a Copt, one Jesus Buktor, sent to invite me to a fantasia at his house, where I found the Mouniers, the Moudir, and some other Turks, and a disagreeable Italian, who stared at me as if I had been young and pretty, and put Omar into a great fury. I was glad to see the dancing-girls, but I liked old Seyyid Achmet's patriarchal ways much better than the tone of the Frenchified Copt. At first I thought the dancing queer and dull. One girl was very handsome, but cold and uninteresting; one who sang was also very pretty and engaging, and a dear little thing. But the dancing was contortions, more or less graceful, _very_ wonderful as gymnastic feats, and no more. But the captain called out to one Latifeh, an ugly, clumsy-looking wench, to show the Sitt what she could do. And then it was revealed to me. The ugly girl started on her feet and became the 'serpent of old Nile,'--the head, shoulders and arms eagerly bent forward, waist in, and haunches advanced on the bent knees--the posture of a cobra about to spring. I could not call it _voluptuous_ any more than Racine's _Phedre_. It is _Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee_, and to me seemed tragic. It is far more realistic than the 'fandango,' and far less coquettish, because the thing represented is _au grande serieux_, not travestied, _gaze_, or played with; and like all such things, the Arab men don't think it the least improper. Of course the girls don't commit any indecorums before European women, except the dance itself. Seyyid Achmet would have given me a fantasia, but he feared I might have men with me, and he had had a great annoyance with two Englishmen who wanted to make the girls dance naked, which they objected to, and he had to turn them out of his house after hospitably entertaining them.

Our procession home to the boat was very droll. Mme. Mounier could not ride an Arab saddle, so I lent her mine and _enfourche'd_ my donkey, and away we went with men running with 'meshhaals' (fire-baskets on long poles) and lanterns, and the captain shouting out 'Full speed!' and such English phrases all the way--like a regular old salt as he is. We got here last night, and this morning Mustapha A'gha and the Nazir came down to conduct me up to my palace. I have such a big rambling house all over the top of the temple of Khem. How I wish I had you and the chicks to fill it! We had about twenty _fellahs_ to clean the dust of _three years_' accumulation, and my room looks quite handsome with carpets and a divan. Mustapha's little girl found her way here when she heard I was come, and it seemed quite pleasant to have her playing on the carpet with a dolly and some sugar-plums, and making a feast for dolly on a saucer, arranging the sugar-plums Arab fashion. She was monstrously pleased with Rainie's picture and kissed it. Such a quiet, nice little brown tot, and curiously like Rainie and walnut-juice.

[Picture: Luxor, by Edward Lear, showing Lady Duff Gordon's house, now
destroyed]