Chapter IX: Part 9

Bye the bye I will tell you about the tenure of land in Egypt which people are always disputing about, as the Kadee laid it down for me. The _whole_ land belongs to the Sultan of Turkey, the Pasha being his vakeel (representative), nominally of course as we know. Thus there are no owners, only tenants paying from one hundred piastres tariff (1 pound) down to thirty piastres yearly per feddan (about an acre) according to the quality of the land, or the favour of the Pasha when granting it. This tenancy is hereditary to children only--not to collaterals or ascendants--and it may be sold, but in that case application must be made to the Government. If the owner or tenant dies childless the land reverts to the Sultan, _i.e._ to the Pasha, and _if the Pasha chooses to have any man's land he can take it from him on payment--or without_. Don't let any one tell you that I exaggerate; I have known it happen: I mean the _without_, and the man received feddan for feddan of desert, in return for his good land which he had tilled and watered.

To-morrow night is the great night of Sheykh Abu-l-Hajjaj's _moolid_ and I am desired to go to the mosque for the benefit of my health, and that my friends may say a prayer for my children. The kind hearty welcome I found here has been a real pleasure, and every one was pleased because I was glad to come home to my _beled_ (town), and they all thought it so nice of 'my master' to have come so far to see me because I was sick--all but one Turk, who clearly looked with pitying contempt on so much trouble taken about a sick old woman.

I have left my letter for a long while. You will not wonder--for after some ten days' fever, my poor guest Mohammed Er-Rasheedee died to-day. Two Prussian doctors gave me help for the last four days, but left last night. He sank to sleep quietly at noon with his hand in mine, a good old Muslim sat at his head on one side and I on the other. Omar stood at his head and his black boy Khayr at his feet. We had laid his face to the Kibleh and I spoke to him to see if he knew anything and when he nodded the three Muslims chanted the _Islamee La Illaha_, etc., etc., while I closed his eyes. The 'respectable men' came in by degrees, took an inventory of his property which they delivered to me, and washed the body, and within an hour and a half we all went out to the burial place; I following among a troop of women who joined us to wail for 'the brother who had died far from his place.' The scene as we turned in between the broken colossi and the pylons of the temple to go to the mosque was over-powering. After the prayer in the mosque we went out to the graveyard, Muslims and Copts helping to carry the dead, and my Frankish hat in the midst of the veiled and wailing women; all so familiar and yet so strange. After the burial the Imam, Sheykh Abd-el-Waris, came and kissed me on the shoulders and the Shereef, a man of eighty, laid his hands on my shoulders and said, 'Fear not my daughter, neither all the days of thy life nor at the hour of thy death, for God is with thee.' I kissed the old man's hand and turned to go, but numberless men came and said 'A thousand thanks, O our sister, for what thou hast done for one among us,' and a great deal more. Now the solemn chanting of the _Fikees_, and the clear voice of the boy reciting the Koran in the room where the man died are ringing through the house. They will pass the night in prayer, and to-morrow there will be the prayer of deliverance in the mosque. Poor Khayr has just crept in to have a quiet cry--poor boy. He is in the inventory and to-morrow I must deliver him up to _les autorites_ to be forwarded to Cairo with the rest of the property. He is very ugly with his black face wet and swollen, but he kisses my hand and calls me his mother quite 'natural like'--you see colour is no barrier here.

The weather is glorious this year, and in spite of some fatigue I am extremely well and strong, and have hardly any cough at all. I am so sorry that the young Rothschild was so hard to Er-Rasheedee and that his French doctor refused to come and see him. It makes bad blood naturally. However, the German doctors were most kind and helpful.

The festival of Abu-l-Hajjaj was quite a fine sight, not splendid at all--_au contraire_--but spirit-stirring; the flags of the Sheykh borne by his family chanting, and the men tearing about in mimic fight on horseback with their spears. My acquaintance of last year, Abd-el-Moutovil, the fanatical Sheykh from Tunis was there. At first he scowled at me. Then someone told him how Rothschild had left Er-Rasheedee, and he held forth about the hatred of all the unbelievers to the Muslims, and ended by asking where the sick man was. A quaint little smile twinkled in Sheykh Yussuf's soft eyes and he curled his silky moustache as he said demurely, 'Your Honour must go and visit him at the house of the English Lady.' I am bound to say that the Pharisee 'executed himself handsomely, for in a few minutes he came up to me and took my hand and even hoped I would visit the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj with him!!

Since I wrote last I have been rather poorly--more cough, and most wearing sleeplessness. A poor young Englishman died here at the house of the Austrian Consular agent. I was too ill to go to him, but a kind, dear young Englishwoman, a Mrs. Walker, who was here with her family in a boat, sat up with him three nights and nursed him like a sister. A young American lay sick at the same time in the house, he is now gone down to Cairo, but I doubt whether he will reach it alive. The Englishman was buried on the first day of Ramadan where they bury strangers, on the site of a former Coptic church. Archdeacon Moore read the service; Omar and I spread my old flag over the bier, and Copts and Muslims helped to carry the poor stranger. It was a most impressive sight. The party of Europeans, all strangers to the dead but all deeply moved; the group of black-robed and turbaned Copts; the sailors from the boats; the gaily dressed dragomans; several brown-shirted fellaheen and the thick crowd of children--all the little Abab'deh stark naked and all behaving so well, the expression on their little faces touched me most of all. As Muslims, Omar and the boatmen laid him down in the grave, and while the English prayer was read the sun went down in a glorious flood of light over the distant bend of the Nile. 'Had he a mother, he was young?' said an Abab'deh woman to me with tears in her eyes and pressing my hand in sympathy for that far-off mother of such a different race.

Passenger steamboats come now every fortnight, but I have had no letter for a month. I have no almanack and have lost count of European time--to-day is the 3 of Ramadan, that is all I know. The poor black slave was sent back from Keneh, God knows why--because he had no money and the Moudir could not 'eat off him' as he could off the money and property--he believes. He is a capital fellow, and in order to compensate me for what he eats he proposed to wash for me, and you would be amused to see Khayr with his coal-black face and filed teeth doing laundry-maid out in the yard. He fears the family will sell him and hopes he may fetch a good price for 'his boy'--only on the other hand he would so like me to buy him--and so his mind is disturbed. Meanwhile the having all my clothes washed clean is a great luxury.

The steamer is come and I must finish in haste. I have corrected the proofs. There is not much to alter, and though I regret several lost letters I can't replace them. I tried, but it felt like a forgery. Do you cut out and correct, dearest Mutter, you will do it much better than I.

January 8, 1865: Dowager Lady Duff Gordon

_To the Dowager Lady Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_January_ 8, 1865.

DEAR OLD LADY,

I received your kind letter in the midst of the drumming and piping and chanting and firing of guns and pistols and scampering of horses which constitute a religious festival in Egypt. The last day of the _moolid_ of Abu-l-Hajjaj fell on the 1st January so you came to wish me 'May all the year be good to thee' as the people here were civil enough to do when I told them it was the first day of the _Frankish_ year. (The _Christian_ year here begins in September.)

I was very sorry to hear of poor Lady Theresa's (Lady Theresa Lewis) death. I feel as if I had no right to survive people whom I left well and strong when I came away so ill. As usual the air of Upper Egypt has revived me again, but I am still weak and thin, and hear many lamentations at my altered looks. However, '_Inshallah_, thou wilt soon be better.'

Why don't you make Alexander edit your letters from Spain? I am sure they would be far more amusing than mine can possibly be--for you _can_ write letters and I never could. I wish I had Miss Berry's though I never did think her such a genius as most people, but her letters must be amusing from the time when they were written. Alexander will tell you how heavy the hand of Pharaoh is upon this poor people. 'My father scourged you with whips but I will scourge you with scorpions,' did not Rehoboam say so? or I forget which King of Judah. The distress here is frightful in all classes, and no man's life is safe.

Ali Bey Rheda told me the other day that Prince Arthur is coming here and that he was coming up with him after taking a Prince of Hohenzollern back to Cairo. There will be all the _fantasia_ possible for him here. Every man that has a horse will gallop him to pieces in honour of the son of the Queen of the English, and not a charge of powder will be spared. If you see Layard tell him that Mustapha A'gha had the whole Koran read for his benefit at the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj besides innumerable _fathahs_ which he said for him himself. He consulted me as to the propriety of sending Layard a backsheesh, but I declared that Layard was an Emeer of the Arabs and a giver, not a taker of backsheesh.

January 9, 1865: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

LUXOR,
_January_ 9, 1865.

I gave Sheykh Yussuf your knife to cut his _kalem_ (reed pen) with, and to his little girl the coral waistband clasp you gave me _as from you_. He was much pleased. I also brought the Shereef the psalms in Arabic to his great delight. The old man called on all 'our family' to say a _fathah_ for their sister, after making us all laugh by shouting out '_Alhamdulillah_! here is our darling safe back again.'

I wish you could have seen me in the crowd at Keneh holding on to the Kadee's _farageeyeh_ (a loose robe worn by the Ulema). He is the real original Kadee of the Thousand and One Nights. Did ever Kadee tow an Englishwoman round a Sheykh's tomb before? but I thought his determination to show the people that he considered a Christian not out of place in a Muslim holy place very edifying.

I find an exceedingly pleasant man here, an Abab'deh, a very great Sheykh from beyond Khartoum, a man of fifty I suppose, with manners like an English nobleman, simple and polite and very intelligent. He wants to take me to Khartoum for two months up and back, having a tent and a _takhterawan_ (camel-litter) and to show me the Bishareen in the desert. We traced the route on my map which to my surprise he understood, and I found he had travelled into Zanzibar and knew of the existence of the Cape of Good Hope and the English colony there. He had also travelled in the Dinka and Shurook country where the men are seven feet and over high (Alexander saw a Dinka girl at Cairo three inches taller than himself!). He knows Madlle. Tine and says she is 'on everyone's head and in their eyes' where she has been. You may fancy that I find Sheykh Alee very good company.

To-day the sand in front of the house is thronged with all the poor people with their camels, of which the Government has made a new levy of eight camels to every thousand feddans. The poor beasts are sent off to transport troops in the Soudan, and not being used to the desert, they all die--at all events their owners never see one of them again. The discontent is growing stronger every day. Last week the people were cursing the Pasha in the streets of Assouan, and every one talks aloud of what they think.

_January_ 11.--The whole place is in desolation, the men are being beaten, one because his camel is not good enough, another because its saddle is old and shabby, and the rest because they have not money enough to pay two months' food and the wages of one man, to every four camels, to be paid for the use of the Government beforehand. The _courbash_ has been going on my neighbours' backs and feet all the morning. It is a new sensation too when a friend turns up his sleeve and shows the marks of the wooden handcuffs and the gall of the chain on his throat. The system of wholesale extortion and spoliation has reached a point beyond which it would be difficult to go. The story of Naboth's vineyard is repeated daily on the largest scale. I grieve for Abdallah-el-Habbashee and men of high position like him, sent to die by disease (or murder), in Fazoghou, but I grieve still more over the daily anguish of the poor fellaheen, who are forced to take the bread from the mouths of their starving families and to eat it while toiling for the private profit of one man. Egypt is one vast 'plantation' where the master works his slaves without even feeding them. From my window now I see the men limping about among the poor camels that are waiting for the Pasha's boats to take them, and the great heaps of maize which they are forced to bring for their food. I can tell you the tears such a sight brings to one's eyes are hot and bitter. These are no sentimental grievances; hunger, and pain, and labour without hope and without reward, and the constant bitterness of impotent resentment. To you all this must sound remote and almost fabulous. But try to imagine Farmer Smith's team driven off by the police and himself beaten till he delivered his hay, his oats and his farm-servant for the use of the Lord Lieutenant, and his two sons dragged in chains to work at railway embankments--and you will have some idea of my state of mind to-day. I fancy from the number of troops going up to Assouan that there is another rising among the blacks. Some of the black regiments revolted up in the Soudan last summer, and now I hear Shaheen Pasha is to be here in a day or two on his way up, and the camels are being sent off by hundreds from all the villages every day. But I am weary of telling, and you will sicken of hearing my constant lamentations.

Sheykh Hassan dropped in and dined with me yesterday and described his mother and her high-handed rule over him. It seems he had a 'jeunesse orageuse' and she defended him against his father's displeasure, but when the old Sheykh died she informed her son that if he ever again behaved in a manner unworthy of a Sheykh-el-Arab she would not live to see it. 'Now if my mother told me to jump into the river and drown I should say _hader_ (ready), for I fear her exceedingly and love her above all people in the world, and have left everything in her hand.' He was good enough to tell me that I was the only woman he knew like his mother and that was why he loved me so much. I am to visit this Arab Deborah at the Abab'deh village two days ride from the first Cataract. She will come and meet me at the boat. Hassan was splendid when he said how he feared his mother exceedingly.

To my amazement to-day in walked the tremendous Alim from Tunis, Sheykh Abd-el-Moutovil, who used to look so black at me. He was very civil and pleasant and asked no end of questions about steam engines, and telegraphs and chemistry; especially whether it was true that the Europeans still fancied they could make gold. I said that no one had believed that for nearly two hundred years, and he said that the Arabs also knew it was 'a lie,' and he wondered to hear that Europeans, who were so clever, believed it. He had just been across the Nile to see the tombs of the Kings and of course 'improved the occasion' and uttered a number of the usual fine sayings about the vanity of human things. He told me I was the only Frank he had ever spoken to. I observed he did not say a word about religion, or use the usual pious phrases. By the bye, Sheykh Yussuf filled up my inkstand for me the other evening and in pouring the ink said 'Bismillah el-Rachman el-Racheem' (In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate). I said 'I like that custom, it is good to remind us that ink may be a cruel poison or a good medicine.'

I am better, and have hardly any cough. The people here think it is owing to the intercession of Abu-l-Hajjaj who specially protects me. I was obliged to be wrapped in the green silk cover of his tomb when it was taken off to be carried in procession, partly for my health and general welfare, and as a sort of adoption into the family. I made a feeble resistance on the score of being a Nazraneeyeh but was told 'Never fear, does not God know thee and the Sheykh also? no evil will come to thee on that account but good.' And I rather think that general goodwill and kindness is wholesome.

February 7, 1865: Miss Austin

_To Miss Austin_.

LUXOR,
_February_ 7, 1865.

MY DEAREST CHARLEY,

I am tolerably well, but I am growing very homesick--or rather children-sick. As the time slips on I get more and more the feeling of all I am losing of my children. We have delicious weather here and have had all the time; there has been no cold at all this winter here.

M. Prevost Paradol is here for a few days--a very pleasant man indeed, and a little good European talk is a very agreeable interlude to the Arab prosiness, or rather _enfantillage_, on the part of the women. I have sought about for shells and a few have been brought me from the Cataract, but of snails I can learn no tidings nor have I ever seen one, neither can I discover that there are any shells in the Nile mud. At the first Cataract they are found sticking to the rocks. The people here are very stupid about natural objects that are of no use to them. Like with the French small birds are all sparrows, and wild flowers there are none, and only about five varieties of trees in all Egypt.

This is a sad year--all the cattle are dead, the Nile is now as low as it was last July, and the song of the men watering with the _shadoofs_ sounds sadly true as they chant _Ana ga-ahn_, etc. 'I am hungry, I am hungry for a piece of dourrah bread,' sings one, and the other chimes in, _Meskeen_, _meskeen_ 'Poor man, poor man,' or else they sing a song about Seyyidna Iyoob 'Our master Job' and his patience. It is sadly appropriate now and rings on all sides as the _shadoofs_ are greatly multiplied for lack of oxen to turn the _sakiahs_ (waterwheels). All is terribly dear, and many are sick from sheer weakness owing to poor food; and then I hear fifty thousand are to be taken to work at the canal from Geezeh to Siout through the Fayoum. The only comfort is the enormous rise of wages, which however falls heavy on the rich. The sailors who got forty to fifty piastres five years ago now get three to five hundred piastres a month. So I fear I must give up my project of a dahabieh. If the new French Consul-General 'knows not Joseph' and turns me out, I am to live in a new house which Sheykh Yussuf is now building and of which he would give me the terrace and build three rooms on it for me. I wish I got better or worse, and could go home. I do get better, but _so_ slowly, I cough a good deal at times, and I am very thin, but not so weak as I was or so breathless.

February 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_February_ 7, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I am enjoying a 'great indulgence of talk' with M. Prevost Paradol as heartily as any nigger. He is a delightful person. This evening he is coming with Arakel Bey, his Armenian companion, and I will invite a few Arabs to show him. I sent off the proofs yesterday per passenger steamer. I trust they will arrive safe. It is too disheartening about letters, so many are lost. I am dreadfully disappointed in my letters, I _really_ don't think them good--you know I don't _blaguer_ about my own performances. I am very glad people like my Cape letters which I forget--but honestly I don't think the Egyptian good. You know I don't 'pretend' if I think I have done something well and I was generally content with my translations, but I feel these all to be poor and what Maurice calls 'dry' when I know how curious and interesting and poetical the country really is.

I paid Fadil Pasha a visit on his boat, and it was just like the middle ages. In order to amuse me he called up a horrid little black boy of about four to do tricks like a dancing dog, which ended in a performance of the Mussulman prayer. The little beast was dressed in a Stamboulee dress of scarlet cloth.

All the Arab doctors come to see me now as they go up and down the river to give me help if I want it. Some are very pleasant men. Mourad Effendi speaks German exactly like a German. The old Sheykh-el-Beled of Erment who visits me whenever he comes here, and has the sweetest voice I ever heard, complained of the climate of Cairo. 'There is no sun there at all, it is no brighter or warmer than the moon.' What do you think our sun must be now you know Cairo. We have had a glorious winter, like the finest summer weather at home only so much finer.

Janet wishes to go with me if I go to Soden, I must make enquiries about the climate. Ross fears it is too cold for an Egyptian like me. I should enjoy to have all the family _au grand complet_. I will leave Luxor in May and get to you towards the latter part of June, if that pleases you, _Inshallah_!

February 7, 1865: Mrs. Ross

_To Mrs. Ross_.

LUXOR,
_February_ 7, 1865.

DEAREST JANET,

It is quite heartrending about my letters. I have 'got the eye' evidently. The black slave of the poor dragoman who died in my house is here still, and like a dog that has lost his master has devoted himself to me. It seems nobody's business to take him away--as the Kadee did the money and the goods--and so it looks as if I should quietly inherit poor ugly Khayr. He is of a degree of ugliness quite transcendent, with teeth filed sharp 'in order to eat people' as he says, but the most good-humoured creature and a very fair laundry-maid. It is evidently no concern of mine to send him to be sold in Cairo, so I wait the event. If nobody ever claims him I shall keep him at whatever wages may seem fit, and he will subside into liberty. _Du reste_, the Maohn here says he is legally entitled to his freedom. If the new French Consul-General will let me stay on here I will leave my furniture and come down straight to your hospitable roof in Alexandria _en route_ for Europe. I fear my plan of a dahabieh of my own would be too expensive, the wages of common boatmen now are three napoleons a month. M. Prevost Paradol, whose company has been a real _bonne fortune_ to me, will speak to the Consul-General. I know all Thebes would sign a round-robin in my favour if they only knew how, for I am very popular here, and the only _Hakeen_. I have effected some brilliant cures, and get lots of presents. Eggs, turkeys, etc., etc., it is quite a pleasure to see how the poor people instead of trying to sponge on one are anxious to make a return for kindness. I give nothing whatever but my physick. These country people are very good. A nice young Circassian Cawass sat up with a stranger, a dying Englishman, all night because I had doctored his wife. I have also a pupil, Mustapha's youngest boy, a sweet intelligent lad who is pining for an education. I wish he could go to England. He speaks English very well and reads and writes indifferently, but I never saw a boy so wild to learn. Is it difficult to get a boy into the Abbassieh college? as it is gratuitous I suppose it is. I quite grieve over little Ach met forced to dawdle away his time and his faculties here.

March 13, 1865: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

LUXOR,
_March_ 13, 1865.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I hope your mind has not been disturbed by any rumours of 'battle, murder and sudden death' up in our part of the world. A week ago we heard that a Prussian boat had been attacked, all on board murdered, and the boat burned; then that ten villages were in open revolt, and that Effendina (the Viceroy) himself had come up and 'taken a broom and swept them clean' _i.e._--exterminated the inhabitants. The truth now appears to be that a crazy darweesh has made a disturbance--but I will tell it as I heard it. He did as his father likewise did thirty years ago, made himself _Ism_ (name) by repeating one of the appellations of God, like _Ya Latif_ three thousand times every night for three years which rendered him invulnerable. He then made friends with a Jinn who taught him many more tricks--among others, that practised in England by the Davenports of slipping out of any bonds. He then deluded the people of the desert by giving himself out as _El-Mahdi_ (he who is to come with the Lord Jesus and to slay Antichrist at the end of the world), and proclaimed a revolt against the Turks. Three villages below Keneh--Gau, Rayanaeh and Bedeh took part in the disturbance, and Fodl Pasha came up with steamboats, burnt the villages, shot about one hundred men and devastated the fields. At first we heard one thousand were shot, now it is one hundred. The women and children will be distributed among other villages. The darweesh some say is killed, others that he is gone off into the desert with a body of bedaween and a few of the fellaheen from the three ravaged villages. Gau is a large place--as large, I think as Luxor. The darweesh is a native of Salamieh, a village close by here, and yesterday his brother, a very quiet man, and his father's father-in-law old Hajjee Sultan were carried off prisoners to Cairo, or Keneh, we don't know which. It seems that the boat robbed belonged to Greek traders, but no one was hurt, I believe, and no European boat has been molested.

Baron Kevenbrinck was here yesterday with his wife, and they saw all the sacking of the villages and said no resistance was offered by the people whom the soldiers shot down as they ran, and they saw the sheep etc. being driven off by the soldiers. You need be in no alarm about me. The darweesh and his followers could not pounce on us as we are eight good miles from the desert, _i.e._ the mountain, so we must have timely notice, and we have arranged that if they appear in the neighbourhood the women and children of the outlying huts should come into my house which is a regular fortress, and also any travellers in boats, and we muster little short of seven hundred men able to fight including Karnac, moreover Fodl Pasha and the troops are at Keneh only forty miles off.

Three English boats went down river to-day and one came up. The Kevenbrincks went up last night. I dined with them, she is very lively and pleasant. I nearly died of laughing to-day when little Achmet came for his lesson. He pronounced that he was sick of love for her. He played at cards with her yesterday afternoon and it seems lost his heart (he is twelve and quite a boyish boy, though a very clever one) and he said he was wishing to play a game for a kiss as the stake. He had put on a turban to-day, on the strength of his passion, to look like a man, and had neglected his dress otherwise because 'when young men are sick of love they always do so.' The fact is the Baroness was kind and amiable and tried to amuse him as she would have done to a white boy, hence Achmet's susceptible heart was 'on fire for her.' He also asked me if I had any medicine to make him white, I suppose to look lovely in her eyes. He little knows how very pretty he is with his brown face--as he sits cross-legged on the carpet at my feet in his white turban and blue shirt reading aloud--he was quite a picture. I have grown very fond of the little fellow, he is so eager to learn and to improve and so remarkably clever.

My little Achmet, who is donkey-boy and general little slave, the smallest slenderest quietest little creature, has implored me to take him with me to England. I wish Rainie could see him, she would be so 'arprized' at his dark brown little face, so _fein_, and with eyes like a dormouse. He is a true little Arab--can run all day in the heat, sleeps on the stones and eats anything--quick, gentle and noiseless and fiercely jealous. If I speak to any other boy he rushes at him and drives him away, and while black Khayr was in the house, he suffered martyrdom and the kitchen was a scene of incessant wrangle about the coffee. Khayr would bring me my coffee and Achmet resented the usurpation of his functions--of course quite hopelessly, as Khayr was a great stout black of eighteen and poor little Achmet not bigger than Rainie. I am really tempted to adopt the vigilant active little creature.

_March_ 15.--Sheykh Yussuf returned from a visit to Salamieh last night. He tells me the darweesh Achmet et-Tayib is not dead, he believes that he is a mad fanatic and a communist. He wants to divide all property equally and to kill all the Ulema and destroy all theological teaching by learned men and to preach a sort of revelation or interpretation of the Koran of his own. 'He would break up your pretty clock,' said Yussuf, 'and give every man a broken wheel out of it, and so with all things.'

One of the dragomans here had been urging me to go down but Yussuf laughed at any idea of danger, he says the people here have fought the bedaween before and will not be attacked by such a handful as are out in the mountain now; _du reste_ the Abu-l-Hajjajieh (family of Abu-l-Hajjaj) will 'put their seal' to it that I am their sister and answer for me with a man's life. It would be foolish to go down into whatever disturbance there may be alone in a small country boat and where I am not known. The Pasha himself we hear is at Girgeh with steamboats and soldiers, and if the slightest fear should arise steamers will be sent up to fetch all the Europeans. What I grieve over is the poor villagers whose little property is all confiscated, guilty and innocent alike, and many shot as they ran away. Hajjee Ali tells me privately that he believes the discontent against the Government is very deep and universal and that there will be an outbreak--but not yet. The Pasha's attempt to regulate the price of food by edicts has been very disastrous, and of course the present famine prices are laid to his charge--if a man will be omnipotent he must take the consequences when he fails. I don't believe in an outbreak--I think the people are too thoroughly accustomed to suffer and to obey, besides they have no means of communication, and the steamboats can run up and down and destroy them _en detail_ in a country which is eight hundred miles long by from one to eight wide, and thinly peopled. Only Cairo could do anything, and everything is done to please the Cairenes at the expense of the fellaheen.

The great heat has begun these last three days. My cough is better and I am grown fatter again. The Nile is so low that I fancy that six weeks or two months hence I shall have to go down in two little boats--even now the dahabiehs keep sticking fast continually. I have promised some neighbours to bring back a little seed corn for them, some of the best English wheat without beard. All the wheat here is bearded and they have an ambition for some of ours. I long to bring them wheelbarrows and spades and pickaxes. The great folks get steamploughs, but the labourers work with their bare hands and a rush basket _pour tout potage_, and it takes six to do the work of one who has got good tools.

March 25, 1865: Mrs. Ross

_To Mrs. Ross_.

LUXOR,
_March_ 25, 1865.

DEAREST JANET,

I hope you have not had visions of me plundered and massacred by the crazy darweesh who has caused the destruction of Gau and three other villages. I assure you we are quite quiet here and moreover have arranged matters for our defence if Achmet et Tayib should honour us with a visit. The heat has just set in, thermometer 89 degrees to-day, of course I am much better, fatter and cough less.

Many thanks to Henry about Achmet Ibn-Mustapha, but his father is going to send him to England into Mr. Fowler's workshop, which will be a much better training I think. Mr. Fowler takes him without a premium most kindly. Lord Dudley will tell you what a splendid entertainment I gave him; I think he was quite frightened at the sight of the tray and the black fingers in the dishes.

The Abab'deh Sheykh and his handsome brother propose to take me to the moolid of Sheykh-el-Shadhilee (the coffee saint) in the desert to see all the wild Abab'deh and Bishareeyeh. It is very tempting, if I feel pretty well I must go I think and perhaps the change might do me good. They believe no European ever went to that festival. There are camel-races and a great show of pretty girls says the handsome Hassan. A fine young Circassian cawass here has volunteered to be my servant anywhere and to fight anybody for me because I have cured his pretty wife. You would love Kursheed with his clear blue eyes, fair face and brisk neat soldierly air. He has a Crimean medal and such a lot of daggers and pistols and is such a tremendous Muslim, but never-the-less he loves me and tells me all his affairs and how tiresome his wife's mother is. I tell him all wives' mothers always are, but he swears _Wallahi_, _Howagah_ (Mr.) Ross don't say so, _Wallahi_, _Inshallah_!

March 30, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_March_ 30, 1865.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have just received your letter of March 3 with one from Janet, which shows of how little moment the extermination of four villages is in this country, for she does not allude to our revolt and evidently has not heard of it.

In my last letter to Mutter I told how one Achmet et Tayib, a mad darweesh had raised a riot at Gau below Keneh and how a boat had been robbed and how we were all rather looking out for a _razzia_ and determined to fight Achmet et Tayib and his followers. Then we called them _haramee_ (wicked ones) and were rather blood-thirstily disposed towards them and resolved to keep order and protect our property. But now we say _nas messakeen_ (poor people) and whisper to each other that God will not forget what the Pasha has done. The truth of course we shall never know. But I do know that one Pasha said he had hanged five hundred, and another that he had sent three hundred to Fazoghlou (_comme qui dirait Cayenne_) and all for the robbery of one Greek boat in which only the steersman was killed. I cannot make out that anything was done by the 'insurgents' beyond going out into the desert to listen to the darweesh's nonsense, and 'see a reed shaken by the wind;' the party that robbed the boat was, I am told, about forty strong. But the most horrid stories are current among the people of the atrocities committed on the wretched villagers by the soldiers. Not many were shot, they say, and they attempted no resistance, but the women and girls were outraged and murdered and the men hanged and the steamers loaded with plunder. The worst is that every one believes that the Europeans aid and abet, and all declare that the Copts were spared to please the _Frangees_. Mind I am not telling you _facts_ only what the people are saying--in order to show you their feelings. One most respectable young man sat before me on the floor the other day and told me what he had heard from those who had come up the river. Horrible tales of the stench of the bodies which are left unburied by the Pasha's order--of women big with child ripped open, etc., etc. 'Thou knowest oh! our Lady, that we are people of peace in this place, and behold now if one madman should come and a few idle fellows go out to the mountain (desert) with him, Effendina will send his soldiers to destroy the place and spoil our poor little girls and hang us--is that right, oh Lady and Achmet el-Berberi saw Europeans with hats in the steamer with Effendina and the soldiers. Truly in all the world none are miserable like us Arabs. The Turks beat us, and the Europeans hate us and say _quite right_. By God, we had better lay down our heads in the dust (die) and let the strangers take our land and grow cotton for themselves. As for me I am tired of this miserable life and of fearing for my poor little girls.'

Mahommed was really eloquent, and when he threw his _melayeh_ over his face and sobbed, I am not ashamed to say that I cried too. I know very well that Mahommed was not quite wrong in what he says of the Europeans. I know the cruel old platitudes about governing Orientals by fear which the English pick up like mocking birds from the Turks. I know all about 'the stick' and 'vigour' and all that--but--'I sit among the people' and I know too that Mohammed feels just as John Smith or Tom Brown would feel in his place, and that men who were very savage against the rioters in the beginning, are now almost in a humour to rise against the Turks themselves just exactly as free-born Britons might be. There are even men of the class who have something to lose who express their disgust very freely.

I saw the steamer pass up to Fazoghlou but the prisoners were all below. The Sheykh of the Abab'deh here has had to send a party of his men to guard them through the desert. Altogether this year is miserable in Egypt. I have not once heard the _zaghareet_. Every one is anxious and depressed, and I fear hungry, the land is parched from the low Nile, the heat has set in six weeks earlier than usual, the animals are scarecrows for want of food, and now these horrid stories of bloodshed and cruelty and robbery (for the Pasha takes the lands of these villages for his own) have saddened every face. I think Hajjee Ali is right and that there will be more disturbances. If there are they will be caused by the cruelty and oppression at Gau and the three neighbouring villages. From Salamieh, two miles above Luxor, every man woman and child in any degree kin to Achmet et-Tayib has been taken in chains to Keneh and no one here expects to see one of them return alive. Some are remarkably good men, I hear, and I have heard men say 'if Hajjee Sultan is killed and all his family we will never do a good action any more, for we see it is of no use.'

There was a talk among the three or four Europeans here at the beginning of the rumours of a revolt of organizing a defence among Christians only. Conceive what a silly and gratuitous provocation! There was no religion in the business at all and of course the proper person to organize defence was the Maohn, and he and Mustapha and others had planned using my house as a castle and defending that in case of a visit from the rioters. I have no doubt the true cause of the row is the usual one--hunger--the high price of food. It was like our Swing, or bread riots, nothing more and a very feeble affair too. It is curious to see the travellers' gay dahabiehs just as usual and the Europeans as far removed from all care or knowledge of the distresses as if they were at home. When I go and sit with the English I feel almost as if they were foreigners to me too, so completely am I now _Dint el-Beled_ (daughter of the country) here.

I dined three days running with the Kevenbrincks and one day after dinner we sent for a lot of Arab Sheykhs to come for coffee--the two Abab'deh and a relation of theirs from Khartoum, the Sheykh of Karnac, one Mohammed a rich fellah, and we were joined by the A'gha of Halim Pasha's Hareem, and an ugly beast he is. The little Baroness won all hearts. She is a regular _vif argent_ or as we say _Efreeteh_ and to see the dark faces glittering with merry smiles as they watched her was very droll. I never saw a human being so thoroughly amused as the black Sheykh from the Soudan. Next day we dined at the Austrian agent's and the Baroness at last made the Maohn dance a polka with her while the agent played the guitar. There were a lot of Copts about who nearly died of laughing and indeed so did I. Next day we had a capital dinner at Mustapha's, and the two Abab'deh Sheykhs, the Sheykh of Karnac, the Maohn and Sheykh Yussuf dined with us. The Sheykh of Karnac gave a grand performance of eating like a Bedawee. I have heard you talk of _tripas elasticas_ in Spain but _Wallahi_! anything like the performance of Sheykh Abdallah none but an eyewitness could believe. How he plucked off the lamb's head and handed it to me in token of the highest respect, and how the bones cracked beneath his fingers--how huge handfuls of everything were chucked right down his throat all scorching hot. I encouraged him of course, quoting the popular song about 'doing deeds that Antar did not' and we all grew quite uproarious. When Sheykh Abdallah asked for drink, I cried 'bring the _ballaree_ (the big jar the women fetch water in) for the Sheykh,' and Sheykh Yussuf compared him to Samson and to Og, while I more profanely told how Antar broke the bones and threw them about. The little Baroness was delighted and only expressed herself hurt that no one had crammed anything into her mouth. I told the Maohn her disappointment which caused more laughter as such a custom is unknown here, but he of course made no end of sweet speeches to her. After dinner she showed the Arabs how ladies curtsey to the Queen in England, and the Abab'deh acted the ceremonial of presentation at the court of Darfour, where you have to rub your nose in the dust at the King's feet. Then we went out with lanterns and torches and the Abab'deh did the sword dance for us. Two men with round shields and great straight swords do it. One dances a _pas seul_ of challenge and defiance with prodigious leaps and pirouettes and Hah! Hahs! Then the other comes and a grand fight ensues. When the handsome Sheykh Hassan (whom you saw in Cairo) bounded out it really was heroic. All his attitudes were alike grand and graceful. They all wanted Sheykh Yussuf to play _el-Neboot_ (single stick) and said he was the best man here at it, but his sister was not long dead and he could not. Hassan looks forward to Maurice's coming here to teach him 'the fighting of the English.' How Maurice would pound him!

On the fourth night I went to tea in Lord Hopetoun's boat and their sailors gave a grand _fantasia_ excessively like a Christmas pantomime. One danced like a woman, and there was a regular pantaloon only 'more so,' and a sort of clown in sheepskin and a pink mask who was duly tumbled about, and who distributed _claques_ freely with a huge wooden spoon. It was very good fun indeed, though it was quite as well that the ladies did not understand the dialogue, or that part of the dance which made the Maohn roar with laughter. The Hopetouns had two handsome boats and were living like in May Fair. I am so used now to our poor shabby life that it makes quite a strange impression on me to see all that splendour--splendour which a year or two ago I should not even have remarked--and thus out of 'my inward consciousness' (as Germans say), many of the peculiarities and faults of the people of Egypt are explained to me and accounted for.

_April_ 2.--It is so dreadfully hot and dusty that I shall rather hasten my departure if I can. The winds seem to have begun, and as all the land which last year was green is now desert and dry the dust is four times as bad. If I hear that Ross has bought and sent up a dahabieh I will wait for that, if not I will go in three weeks if I can.

April 3, 1865: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

LUXOR,
_April_ 3, 1865.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have just finished a letter to Alick to go by a steamer to-day. You will see it, so I will go on with the stories about the riots. Here is a thing happening within a few weeks and within sixty miles, and already the events assume a legendary character. Achmet et-Tayib is not dead and where the bullets hit him he shows little marks like burns. The affair began thus: A certain Copt had a Muslim slave-girl who could read the Koran and who served him. He wanted her to be his Hareem and she refused and went to Achmet et-Tayib who offered money for her to her master. He refused it and insisted on his rights, backed by the Government, and thereupon Achmet proclaimed a revolt and the people, tired of taxes and oppressions, said 'we will go with thee.' This is the only bit of religious legend connected with the business. But Achmet et-Tayib still sits in the Island, invisible to the Turkish soldiers who are still there.

Now for a little fact. The man who told me fourteen hundred had been beheaded was Hassan Sheykh of the Abab'deh who went to Gau to bring up the prisoners. The boat stopped a mile above Luxor, and my Mohammed, a most quiet respectable man and not at all a romancer went up in her to El-Moutaneh. I rode with him along the Island. When we came near the boat she went on as far as the point of the Island, and I turned back after only looking at her from the bank and smelling the smell of a slave-ship. It never occurred to me, I own, that the Bey on board had fled before a solitary woman on a donkey, but so it was. He told the Abab'deh Sheykh on board not to speak to me or to let me on board, and told the Captain to go a mile or two further. Mohammed heard all this. He found on board 'one hundred prisoners less two' (ninety-eight). Among them the Moudir of Souhaj, a Turk, in chains and wooden handcuffs like the rest. Mohammed took him some coffee and was civil to him. He says the poor creatures are dreadfully ill-used by the Abab'deh and the Nubians (Berberi) who guard them.

It is more curious than you can conceive to hear all the people say. It is just like going back four or five centuries at least, but with the heterogeneous element of steamers, electric telegraphs and the Bey's dread of the English lady's pen--at least Mohammed attributed his flight to fear of that weapon. It was quite clear that European eyes were dreaded, as the boat stopped three miles above Luxor and its dahabiehs, and had all its things carried that distance.

Yussuf and his uncle want to take me next year to Mecca, the good folks in Mecca would hardly look for a heretical face under the green veil of a _Shereefateh_ of Abu-l-Hajjaj. The Hajjees (pilgrims) have just started from here to Cosseir with camels and donkeys, but most are on foot. They are in great numbers this year. The women chanted and drummed all night on the river bank, and it was fine to see fifty or sixty men in a line praying after their Imam with the red glow of the sunset behind them. The prayer in common is quite a drill and very stately to see. There are always quite as many women as men; one wonders how they stand the march and the hardships.