MEMOIR (continued 6)

The merchant, a well-bred man of the world who has enjoyed life and married wives everywhere—had arrived that day and found a daughter of his dead here. He said he felt very miserable—and everyone told him not to mind and consoled him oddly enough to English ideas. Then people told stories. Omar’s was a good version of the man and wife who would not shut the door and agreed that the first to speak should do it—very funny indeed. Yussuf told a pretty tale of a Sultan who married a Bint el-Arab (daughter of the Bedawee) and how she would not live in his palace, and said she was no fellaha to dwell in houses, and scorned his silk clothes and sheep killed for her daily, and made him live in the desert with her. A black slave told a prosy tale about thieves—and the rest were more long than pointed.

Hassan’s Arab feelings were hurt at the small quantity of meat set before me. (They can’t kill a sheep now for an honoured guest.) But I told him no greater honour could be paid to us English than to let us eat lentils and onions like one of the family, so that we might not feel as strangers among them—which delighted all the party. After a time the merchant told us his heart was somewhat dilated—as a man might say his toothache had abated—and we said ‘Praise be to God’ all round.

A short time ago my poor friend the Maōhn had a terrible ‘tile’ fall on his head. His wife, two married daughters and nine miscellaneous children arrived on a sudden, and the poor man is now tasting the pleasures which Abraham once endured between Sarah and Hagar. I visited the ladies and found a very ancient Sarah and a daughter of wonderful beauty. A young man here—a Shereef—has asked me to open negotiations for a marriage for him with the Maōhn’s grand daughter a little girl of eight—so you see how completely I am ‘one of the family.’

My boat has not yet made its appearance. I am very well indeed now, in spite, or perhaps because of, the great heat. But there is a great deal of sickness—chiefly dysentery. I never get less than four new patients a day and my ‘practice’ has become quite a serious business. I spent all day on Friday in the Abab’deh quarters where Sheykh Hassan and his slave Rahmeh were both uncommonly ill. Both are ‘all right’ now. Rahmeh is the nicest negro I ever knew, and a very great friend of mine. He is a most excellent, honest, sincere man, and an Effendi (i.e. writes and reads) which is more than his master can do. He has seen all the queer people in the interior of Africa.

The Sheykh of the Bishareen—eight days’ journey from Assouan has invited me and promises me all the meat and milk I can eat, they have nothing else. They live on a high mountain and are very fine handsome people. If only I were strong I could go to very odd places where Frangees are not. Read a very stupid novel (as a story) called ‘le Secret du Bonheur’—it gives the truest impression of the manners of Arabs that I have read—by Ernest Feydeau. According to his book achouat (we are brothers). The ‘caressant’ ways of Arabs are so well described.

It is the same here. The people come and pat and stroke me with their hands, and one corner of my brown abbaieh is faded with much kissing. I am hailed as Sitt Betaana ‘Our own Lady,’ and now the people are really enthusiastic because I refused the offer of some cawasses as a guard which a Bimbashee made me. As if I would have such fellows to help to bully my friends. The said Bimbashee (next in rank to a Bey) a coarse man like an Arnoout, stopped here a day and night and played his little Turkish game, telling me to beware—for the Ulema hated all Franks and set the people against us—and telling the Arabs that Christian Hakeems were all given to poison Muslims. So at night I dropped in at the Maōhn’s with Sheykh Yussuf carrying my lantern—and was loudly hailed with a Salaam Aleykee from the old Shereef himself—who began praising the Gospel I had given him, and me at the same time. Yussuf had a little reed in his hand—the kalem for writing, about two feet long and of the size of a quill. I took it and showed it to the Bimbashee and said—‘Behold the neboot wherewith we are all to be murdered by this Sheykh of the Religion.’ The Bimbashee’s bristly moustache bristled savagely, for he felt that the ‘Arab dogs’ and the Christian khanzeereh (feminine pig) were laughing at it together.

Another steam boat load of prisoners from Gau has just gone up. A little comfort is derived here from the news that, ‘Praise be to God, Moussa Pasha (Governor of the Soudan) is dead and gone to Hell.’ It must take no trifle to send him there judging by the quiet way in which Fadil Pasha is mentioned.

You will think me a complete rebel—but I may say to you what most people would think ‘like my nonsense’—that one’s pity becomes a perfect passion, when one sits among the people—as I do, and sees it all; least of all can I forgive those among Europeans and Christians who can help to ‘break these bruised reeds.’ However, in Cairo and more still in Alexandria, all is quite different. There, the same system which has been so successfully copied in France prevails. The capital is petted at the expense of the fellaheen. Prices are regulated in Cairo for meat and bread as they are or were in Paris, and the ‘dangerous classes’ enjoy all sorts of exemptions. Just like France! The Cairenes eat the bread and the fellaheen eat the stick.

The people here used to dislike Mounier who arrived poor and grew rich and powerful, but they all bless him now and say at El-Moutaneh a man eats his own meat and not the courbash of the Moudir—and Mounier has refused soldiers (as I refused them on my small account) and ‘Please God,’ he will never repent it. Yussuf says ‘What the Turkish Government fears is not for your safety, but lest we should learn to love you too well,’ and it is true. Here there is but one voice. ‘Let the Franks come, let us have the laws of the Christians.’

In Cairo the Franks have dispelled this douce illusion and done the Turk’s work as if they were paid for it. But here come only travellers who pay with money and not with stick—a degree of generosity not enough to be adored.

I perceive that I am a bore—but you will forgive my indignant sympathy with the kind people who treat me so well. Yussuf asked me to let the English papers know about the Gau business. An Alim ed Deen ul-Islam would fain call for help to the Times! Strange changes and signs of the times—these—are they not so?

I went to Church on Good Friday with the Copts. The scene was very striking—the priest dressed like a beautiful Crusader in white robes with crimson crosses. One thing has my hearty admiration. The few children who are taken to Church are allowed to play! Oh my poor little Protestant fellow Christians, can you conceive a religion so delightful as that which permits Peep-bo behind the curtain of the sanctuary! I saw little Butrus and Scendariah at it all church time—and the priest only patted their little heads as he carried the sacrament out to the Hareem. Fancy the parson kindly patting a noisy boy’s head, instead of the beadle whacking him! I am entirely reconciled to the Coptic rules.

May, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Nile Boat, Urania, May, 1865.

Happy as I was in the prospect of seeing you all and miserable as poor Upper Egypt has become, I could not leave without a pang. Our Bairam was not gay. There was horse riding for Sheykh Gibreel (the cousin of Abu’l Haggag) and the scene was prettier than ever I saw. My old friend Yunis the Shereef insisted on showing me that at eighty-five he could still handle a horse and throw a Gereed ‘for Sheykh Gibreel and the Lady’ as he said. Then arrived the Mufettish of Zenia with his gay attendants and filled the little square in front of the Cadi’s castellated house where we were sitting. The young Sheykh of Salamieh rode beautifully and there was some excellent Neboot play (sort of very severe quarterstaff peculiar to the Fellaheen).

Next day was the great dinner given by Mohammed and Mustapha outside Mohammed’s house opposite Sheykh Gibreel’s tomb—200 men ate at his gate. I went to see it and was of course asked to eat. ‘Can one like thee eat the Melocheea of the Fellaheen?’ So I joined a party of five round a little wooden tray, tucked up my sleeve and ate—dipping the bread into the Melocheea which is like very sloppy spinach but much nicer. Then came the master and his servants to deal the pieces of meat out of a great basket—sodden meat—and like Benjamin my piece was the largest, so I tore off a bit and handed it to each of my companions, who said ‘God take thee safe and happy to thy place and thy children and bring thee back to us in safety to eat the meat of the festival together once more.’

The moon rose clear and bright behind the one tall palm tree that overhangs the tomb of Sheykh Gibreel. He is a saint of homely tastes and will not have a dome over him or a cover for his tomb, which is only surrounded by a wall breast-high, enclosing a small square bit of ground with the rough tomb on one side. At each corner was set up a flag, and a few dim lanterns hung overhead. The 200 men eating were quite noiseless—and as they rose, one by one washed their hands and went, the crowd melted away like a vision. But before all were gone, came the Bulook, or sub-magistrate—a Turkish Jack in office with the manners of a Zouave turned parish beadle. He began to sneer at the melocheea of the fellaheen and swore he could not eat it if he sat before it 1,000 years. Hereupon, Omar began to ‘chaff’ him. ‘Eat, oh Bulook Pasha and if it swells thy belly the Lady will give thee of the physick of the English to clean thy stomach upwards and downwards of all thou hast eaten of the food of the fellaheen.’ The Bulook is notorious for his exactions—his ‘eating the people’—so there was a great laugh. Poor Omar was very ill next day—and every one thought the Bulook had given him the eye.

Then came the Mufettish in state to pay his devoirs to the Sheykh in the tomb. He came and talked to Mustapha and Yussuf and enumerated the people taken for the works, 200 from Luxor, 400 from Carnac, 310 from Zenia, 320 from Byadyeh, and 380 from Salamieh—a good deal more than half the adult men to go for sixty days leaving their fields uncultivated and their Hareem and children hungry—for they have to take all the food for themselves.

I rose sick at heart from the Mufettish’s harsh voice, and went down to listen to the Moonsheeds chanting at the tomb and the Zikheers’ strange sobbing, Allah, Allah.

I leaned on the mud wall watching the slender figures swaying in the moonlight, when a tall, handsome fellah came up in his brown shirt, felt libdeh (scull cap), with his blue cotton melaya tied up and full of dried bread on his back. The type of the Egyptian. He stood close beside me and prayed for his wife and children. ‘Ask our God to pity them, O Sheykh, and to feed them while I am away. Thou knowest how my wife worked all night to bake all the wheat for me and that there is none left for her and the children.’ He then turned to me and took my hand and went on, ‘Thou knowest this lady, oh Sheykh Gibreel, take her happy and well to her place and bring her back to us—el Fathah, yah Beshoosheh!’ and we said it together. I could have laid my head on Sheykh Gibreel’s wall and howled. I thanked him as well as I could for caring about one like me while his own troubles were so heavy. I shall never forget that tall athletic figure and the gentle brown face, with the eleven days’ moon of Zulheggeh, and the shadow of the palm tree. That was my farewell. ‘The voice of the miserable is with thee, shall God not hear it?’

Next day Omar had a sharp attack of fever and was delirious—it lasted only two days but left him very weak and the anxiety and trouble was great—for my helping hands were as awkward as they were willing.

In a few days arrived the boat Urania. She is very nice indeed. A small saloon, two good berths—bath and cabinet, and very large kasneh (stern cabin). She is dirty, but will be extremely comfortable when cleaned and painted. On the 15th we sailed. Sheykh Yussuf went with me to Keneh, Mustapha and Seyd going by land—and one of Hajjee Sultan’s disciples and several Luxor men were deck passengers. The Shereef gave me the bread and jars of butter for his grandsons in Gama’l Azhar, and came to see me off. We sat on the deck outside as there was a crowd to say good-bye and had a lot of Hareem in the cabin. The old Shereef made me sit down on the carpet close to him and then said ‘we sit here like two lovers’—at eighty-five even an Arab and a Shereef may be “gaillard”—so I cried, ‘Oh Shereef, what if Omar tells my master the secret thou hast let out—it is not well of thee.’ There was a great laugh which ended in the Shereef saying ‘no doubt thy master is of the best of the people, let us say the Fathah for him,’ and he called on all the people ‘El Fathah for the master of the lady!’ I hope it has benefited you to be prayed for at Luxor.

I had written so far and passed Minieh when I fell ill with pleurisy—I’ve lots more to tell of my journey but am too weak after two weeks in bed (and unable to lie down from suffocation)—but I am much better now. A man from the Azhar is reading the Koran for me outside—while another is gone with candles to Seyeedele Zeynet ‘the fanatics!’

June 16, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Cairo, June 16, 1865.

Dearest Alick,

I will go down to Alexandria in the boat and Omar will work at her. She wants a great deal of repairing I find, and his superintendence will save much money—besides he will do one man’s work as he is a much better carpenter than most here having learnt of the English workmen on the railroad—but the Reis says the boat must come out of the water as her bottom is unsound. She is a splendid sailer I hear and remarkably comfortable. The beds in the kasneh would do for Jacob Omnium. So when you ‘honour our house’ you will be happy. The saloon is small, and the berths as usual. Also she is a very handsome shape—but she wants no end of repairs. So Omar is consoled at being left because he will ‘save our money’ a great deal by piecing sails, and cutting and contriving, and scraping and painting himself. Only he is afraid for me. However, Allah Kereem.

I have a very good Reis I think. The usual tight little black fellow from near Assouan—very neat and active and good tempered—the same cross steersman that we had up to Bedreshayn—but he knows his work well. We had contrary gales the whole way. My men worked all they possibly could, and pulled the rope all day and rowed all night, day after day—but we were twenty-eight days getting down.

I can’t write any more.

October 28, 1865: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Alexandria, October 28, 1865.

I am truly grieved to hear of your wrist and to see your writing look cramped. I arrived here on Thursday after a splendid passage and was very comfortable on board. I found M. Olagnier waiting for me, and Omar, of course, and am installé at Ross’s till my boat gets done which I am told will be in six days. She will be remarkably comfortable. Omar had caused a sort of divan with a roof and back to be constructed just outside the cabin-door where I always sat every evening, which will be the most delightful little nest one can conceive. I shall sit like a Pasha there.

My cough is still very harassing, but my chest less tight and painful, and I feel less utterly knocked down. The weather is beautiful here just now—warm and not nearly so damp as usual.

Lord Edward St. Maur was on board, he has much of his aunt’s pleasantness. Also a very young Bombay Merchant—a Muslim who uttered not one syllable to any one but to me. His talk was just like that of a well-bred and intelligent young Englishman. I am glad to say that his views of the state of India were very encouraging—he seemed convinced that the natives were gradually working their way up to more influence, and said ‘We shall have to thank you for a better form of government by far than any native one ever would have been’—he added, ‘We Muslims have this advantage over the Hindus—that our religion is no barrier at all, socially or politically—between us and you—as theirs is. I mean it ought not to be when both faiths are cleared of superstition and fanaticism.’ He spoke very highly of Sir Bartle Frere but said ‘I wish it were possible for more English gentlemen to come out to India.’ He had been two years in England on mercantile business and was going back to his brother Ala-ed-deen much pleased with the English in England. It is one of the most comforting Erscheinungen I have seen coming from India—if that sort of good sense is pretty common among the very young men they certainly will work their way up.

I should like to see Bayley’s article though I am quite sick of my book—it is very ungracious of me, but I can’t help it.

November 2, 1865: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Alexandria, November 2, 1865.

Dearest Mutter,

The boat like all other things goes but slowly—however the weather here is unusually dry and fine.

I have just been to see my poor friend Sittee Zubeydeh, widow of Hassaneyn Effendi who died in England—and I am filled with admiration at her good sense and courage. She has determined to carry on her husband’s business of letting boats herself, and to educate her children to the best of her power in habits of independence. I hope she will be successful, and receive the respect such rare conduct in a Turkish woman deserves from the English. I was much gratified to hear from her how kindly she had been treated in Glasgow. She said that nothing that could be done for her was left undone. She arrived this morning and I went to see her directly and was really astonished at all she said about her plans for herself and her children. Poor thing! it is a sad blow—for she and Hassaneyn were as thoroughly united as any Europeans could be.

I went afterwards to my boat, which I hope will be done in five or six days. I am extremely impatient to be off. She will be a most charming boat—both comfortable and pretty. The boom for the big sail is new—and I exclaimed, ‘why you have broken the new boom and mended it with leather!’ Omar had put on a sham splice to avert the evil eye from such a fine new piece of wood! Of course I dare not have the blemish renewed or gare the first puff of wind—besides it is too characteristic.

There is some cholera about again, I hear—ten deaths yesterday—so Olagnier tells me. I fancy the rush of Europeans back again, each bringing ‘seven other devils worse than himself’ is the cause of it.

I think I am beginning to improve a little; my cough has been terribly harassing especially at night—but the weather is very good, cool, and not damp.

November 27, 1865: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Cairo, Monday, November 27, 1865.

Dearest Mutter,

I arrived here last night and found a whole heap of letters—and yours I will answer first. I had no heart to write any more from Alexandria where I was worried out of all courage and strength. At last after endless delays and vexations the dahabieh was tant bien que mal ready.

Talk of Arab dawdle! after what I went through—and now I have to wait here for fresh repairs, as we came up baling all the way and I fear cursing the Christian workmen who had bungled so shamefully.

However that is over, and I am much better as to my cough—indeed it is all but gone. Omar was very ill having had dysentery for two months, but he too is well again. He is very grateful for your kind mention of him and says, ‘Send the Great Mother my best Salaam, and tell her her daughter’s people are my people, and where she goes I will go too, and please God I will serve her rich or poor till “He who separates us” shall take me from her.’ The words of Ruth came after all these centuries quite fresh from the soft Egyptian lips.

The ‘He who separated us’ I must explain to you. It is one of the attributes of God, The Separator of Religions implies toleration and friendship by attributing the two religions alike to God—and is never used towards one whose religion is not to be respected.

I have got a levee of former reis’s, sailors, etc. some sick—but most come to talk.

The climate changes quite suddenly as one leaves the Delta, and here I sit at eight in the evening with open doors and windows.

I am so glad to hear of the great success of my dear Father’s book, and to think of your courage in working at it still.

I suppose I shall be here a week longer as I have several jobs to do to my boat, and I shall try to get towed up so as to send back the boat as soon as possible in order to let her. Ali will give £80 a month for her if he gets a party of four to take up. I pay my Reis five napoleons a month while travelling and three while lying still. He is a good, active little fellow.

We were nearly smashed under the railway bridge by an iron barge—and Wallah! how the Reis of the bridge did whack the Reis of the barge. I thought it a sad loss of time, but Reis Ali and my Reis Mohammed seemed to look on the stick as the most effective way of extricating my anchor from the Pasha’s rudder. My crew can’t say ‘Urania’ so they sing ‘go along, oh darling bride’ Arooset er-ralee, as the little Sitt’s best description, and ‘Arooset er-ralee’ will be the dahabieh’s exoteric name—as ‘El Beshoosheeh, is my popular name.

December 5, 1865: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Cairo, December 5, 1865.

Dearest Mutter,

Alhamdulillah—now I am at rest. I have got all the boat in order. My captain, Reis Mohammed, is very satisfactory, and to-day we sail as soon as Omar comes back with the meat, etc. from market.

I received Meadow’s review; I wish he had not said so much about me in it.

Mohammed Gazowee begs to give his best Salaam to Sheykh Stanley whom he longs to see again. He says that all the people said he was not a Christian, for he was not proud ever towards them as Christians are, but a real Sheykh, and that the Bedaween still talk of Sheykh Stanley and of his piety. The old half-witted jester of Luxor has found me out—he has wandered down here to see his eldest son who is serving in the army. He had brought a little boy with him, but is ‘afraid for him’ here, I don’t know why, and has begged me to take the child up to his mother. These licensed possenreisser are like our fools in old times—but less witty than we fancy them to have been—thanks to Shakespeare, I suppose. Each district has one who attends all moolids and other gatherings of the people, and picks up a living. He tells me that the Turkish Názir of Zeneea has begun some business against our Kadee, Sheykh Ibraheem, and Sheykh Yussuf, accused them of something—he does not know what—perhaps of being friends of Hajjee Sultan, or of stealing wood!! If all the friends of Hajjee Sultan are to be prosecuted that will include the whole Saeed.

Of course I am anxious about my friends. All Haleem Pasha Oghdee’s villages have been confiscated (those tributary to him for work) sous prétexte that he ill-used the people, n.b. he alone paid them—a bad example. Pharoah is indeed laying intolerable burthens—not on the Israelites—but on the fellaheen.

Omar said of the great dinner to-day, ‘I think all the food will taste of blood, it is the blood of the poor, and more haram than any pork or wine or blood of beasts.’ Of course such sentiments are not to be repeated—but they are general. The meneggets who picked and made ten mattrasses and fourteen cushions for me in half a day, were laughing and saying, ‘for the Pasha’s boat we work also, at so much a day and we should have done it in four days.’ ‘And for me if I paid by the day instead of by the piece, how long?’ ‘One day instead of half, O Lady, for fear thou shouldest say to us, you have finished in half a day and half the wages is enough for you.’ That is the way in which all the work is done for Effendeena—no wonder his steamers don’t pay.

I saw Ross yesterday—he tells me the Shereef of Mecca has sent him a horse.

December 25, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Thebes, From December 25, 1865, to January 3, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

I wish you all, ‘may the year be good to thee’ as we say here—and now for my history. We left Cairo on the 5th Decr. I was not well. No wind as usual, and we were a week getting to Benisonef where the Stamboolee Greek lady who was so kind to me last summer in my illness came on board with a very well-bred Arab lady. I was in bed, and only stayed a few hours. On to Minieh another five or six days—walked about and saw the preparations for the Pasha’s arrival. Nothing so flat as these affairs here. Not a creature went near the landing-place but his own servants, soldiers, and officials. I thought of the arrival of the smallest of German princes, which makes ten times the noise. Next on to Siout. Ill again, and did not land or see anyone. On to Girgeh, where we only stayed long enough to deliver money and presents which I had been begged to take for some old sailors of mine to their mothers and wives there.

Between Siout and Girgeh an Abyssinian slave lad came and wanted me to steal him; he said his master was a Copt and ill-used him, and the lady beat him. But Omar sagely observed to the sailors, who were very anxious to take him, that a bad master did not give his slave such good clothes and even a pair of shoes—quel luxe!—and that he made too much of his master being a Copt; no doubt he was a lazy fellow, and perhaps had run away with other property besides himself. Soon after I was sitting on the pointed prow of the boat with the Reis, who was sounding with his painted pole (vide antique sculptures and paintings), and the men towing, when suddenly something rose to the surface close to us: the men cried out Beni Adam! and the Reis prayed for the dead. It was a woman: the silver bracelets glittered on the arms raised and stiffened in the agony of death, the knees up and the beautiful Egyptian breasts floated above the water. I shall never forget the horrid sight. ‘God have mercy on her,’ prayed my men, and the Reis added to me, ‘let us also pray for her father, poor man: you see, no robber has done this (on account of the bracelets). We are in the Saeed now, and most likely she has blackened her father’s face, and he has been forced to strangle her, poor man.’ I said ‘Alas!’ and the Reis continued, ‘ah, yes, it is a heavy thing, but a man must whiten his face, poor man, poor man. God have mercy on him.’ Such is Saeedee point d’honneur. However, it turned out she was drowned bathing.

Above Girgeh we stopped awhile at Dishné, a large village. I strolled up alone, les mains dans les poches, ‘sicut meus est mos:’ and was soon accosted with an invitation to coffee and pipes in the strangers’ place, a sort of room open on one side with a column in the middle, like two arches of a cloister, and which in all the villages is close to the mosque: two or three cloaks were pulled off and spread on the ground for me to sit on, and the milk which I asked for, instead of the village coffee, brought. In a minute a dozen men came and sat round, and asked as usual, ‘Whence comest thou, and whither goest thou?’ and my gloves, watch, rings, etc. were handed round and examined; the gloves always call forth many Mashallah’s. I said, ‘I come from the Frank country, and am going to my place near Abu’l Hajjaj.’ Hereupon everyone touched my hand and said, ‘Praise be to God that we have seen thee. Don’t go on: stay here and take 100 feddans of land and remain here.’ I laughed and asked, ‘Should I wear the zaboot (brown shirt) and the libdeh, and work in the field, seeing there is no man with me?’ There was much laughing, and then several stories of women who had farmed large properties well and successfully. Such undertakings on the part of women seem quite as common here as in Europe, and more common than in England.

I took leave of my new friends who had given me the first welcome home to the Saeed, and we went on to Keneh, which we reached early in the morning, and I found my well-known donkey-boys putting my saddle on. The father of one, and the two brothers of the other, were gone to work on the railway for sixty days’ forced labour, taking their own bread, and the poor little fellows were left alone to take care of the Hareem. As soon as we reached the town, a couple of tall young soldiers in the Nizam uniform rushed after me, and greeted me in English; they were Luxor lads serving their time. Of course they attached themselves to us for the rest of the day. We then bought water jars (the specialité of Keneh); gullehs and zees—and I went on to the Kadee’s house to leave a little string of beads, just to show that I had not forgotten the worthy Kadee’s courtesy in bringing his little daughter to sit beside me at dinner when I went down the river last summer. I saw the Kadee giving audience to several people, so I sent in the beads and my salaam; but the jolly Kadee sallied forth into the street and ‘fell upon my neck’ with such ardour that my Frankish hat was sent rolling by contact with the turban of Islam. The Kadee of Keneh is the real original Kadee of our early days; sleek, rubicund, polite—a puisne judge and a dean rolled into one, combining the amenities of the law and the church—with an orthodox stomach and an orthodox turban, both round and stately. I was taken into the hareem, welcomed and regaled, and invited to the festival of Seyd Abd er-Racheem, the great saint of Keneh. I hesitated, and said there were great crowds, and some might be offended at my presence; but the Kadee declared ‘by Him who separated us’ that if any such ignorant persons were present it was high time they learnt better, and said that it was by no means unlawful for virtuous Christians, and such as neither hated nor scorned the Muslimeen, to profit by, or share in their prayers, and that I should sit before the Sheykh’s tomb with him and the Mufti; and that du reste, they wished to give thanks for my safe arrival. Such a demonstration of tolerance was not to be resisted. So after going back to rest, and dine in the boat, I returned at nightfall into the town and went to the burial-place. The whole way was lighted up and thronged with the most motley crowd, and the usual mixture of holy and profane, which we know at the Catholic fêtes also; but more prononcé here. Dancing girls, glittering with gold brocade and coins, swaggered about among the brown-shirted fellaheen, and the profane singing of the Alateeyeh mingled with the songs in honour of the Arab prophet chanted by the Moonsheeds and the deep tones of the ‘Allah, Allah’ of the Zikeers. Rockets whizzed about and made the women screech, and a merry-go-round was in full swing. And now fancy me clinging to the skirts of the Cadi ul Islam (who did not wear a spencer, as the Methodist parson threatened his congregation he would do at the Day of Judgement) and pushing into the tomb of the Seyd Abd er-Racheem, through such a throng. No one seemed offended or even surprised. I suppose my face is so well known at Keneh. When my party had said a Fattah for me and another for my family, we retired to another kubbeh, where there was no tomb, and where we found the Mufti, and sat there all the evening over coffee and pipes and talk. I was questioned about English administration of justice, and made to describe the process of trial by jury. The Mufti is a very dignified gentlemanly man, and extremely kind and civil. The Kadee pressed me to stay next day and dine with him and the Mufti, but I said I had a lantern for Luxor, and I wanted to arrive before the moolid was over, and only three days remained. So the Kadee accompanied me back to the boat, looked at my maps, which pleased him very much, traced out the line of the railway as he had heard it, and had tea.

Next morning we had the first good wind, and bowled up to Luxor in one day, arriving just after sunset. Instantly the boat was filled. Of course Omar and the Reis at once organized a procession to take me and my lantern to the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj—it was the last night but one of his moolid. The lantern was borne on a pole between two of my sailors, and the rest, reinforced by men from a steamer which was there with a Prussian prince, sung and thumped the tarabookeh, and we all marched up after I had undergone every variety of salutation, from Sheykh Yussuf’s embrace to the little boys’ kissing of hands. The first thing I heard was the hearty voice of the old Shereef, who praised God that ‘our darling’ was safe back again, and then we all sat down for a talk; then more Fattahs were said for me, and for you, and for the children; and I went back to bed in my own boat. I found the guard of the French house had been taken off to Keneh to the works, after lying eight days in chains and wooden handcuffs for resisting, and claiming his rights as a French protégé. So we waited for his return, and for the keys which he had taken with him, in hopes that the Keneh authorities would not care to keep me out of the house. I wrote to the French Consular agent at Keneh, and to the Consul at Alexandria, and got him back the third day. What would you think in Europe to see me welcome with enthusiasm a servant just out of chains and handcuffs? At the very moment, too, that Mohammed and I were talking, a boat passed up the river with musick and singing on board. It was a Sheykh-el-Beled, of a place above Esneb, who had lain in prison three years in Cairo, and whose friends were making all the fantasia they could to celebrate the end of his misfortune, of disgrace, il n’en est pas question; and why should it? So many honest men go to prison that it is no presumption at all against a man.

The day after my arrival was the great and last day. The crowd was but little and not lively—times are too hard. But the riding was beautiful. Two young men from Hegaz performed wonderful feats.

I dined with the Maōhn, whose wife cooked me the best dinner I ever ate in this country, or almost anywhere. Marie, who was invited, rejoiced the kind old lady’s heart by her Belgian appreciation of the excellent cookery. ‘Eat, my daughter, eat,’ and even I managed to give satisfaction. Such Bakloweh I never tasted. We removed to the house yesterday, and I have had company ever since.

One Sheykh Alee—a very agreeable man from beyond Khartoom, offers to take me up to Khartoom and back with a Takhterawan (camel litter) in company with Mustapha A’gha, Sheykh Yussuf and a troop of his own Abab’deh. It is a terrible temptation—but it would cost £50—so I refused. Sheykh Alee is so clever and well-bred that I should enjoy it much, and the climate at this season is delightful. He has been in the Denka country where the men are a cubit taller than Sheykh Hassan whom you know, and who enquires tenderly after you.

Now let me describe the state of things. From the Moudeeriat of Keneh only, 25,000 men are taken to work for sixty days without food or pay; each man must take his own basket, and each third man a hoe, not a basket. If you want to pay a substitute for a beloved or delicate son, it costs 1,000 piastres—600 at the lowest; and about 300 to 400 for his food. From Luxor only, 220 men are gone; of whom a third will very likely die of exposure to the cold and misery (the weather is unusually cold). That is to say that this little village, of at most 2,000 souls male and female (we don’t usually count women, from decorum), will pay in labour at least £1,320 in sixty days. We have also already had eleven camels seized to go up to the Soudan; a camel is worth from £18 to £40.

Last year Mariette Bey made excavations at Gourneh forcing the people to work but promising payment at the rate of—Well, when he was gone the four Sheykhs of the village at Gourneh came to Mustapha and begged him to advance the money due from Government, for the people were starving. Mustapha agrees and gives above 300 purses—about £1,000 in current piastres on the understanding that he is to get the money from Government in tariff—and to keep the difference as his profit. If he cannot get it at all the fellaheen are to pay him back without interest. Of course at the rate at which money is here, his profit would be but small interest on the money unless he could get the money directly, and he has now waited six months in vain.

Abdallah the son of el-Habbeshee of Damankoor went up the river in chains to Fazoghlou a fortnight ago and Osman Bey ditto last week—El-Bedrawee is dead there, of course.

Shall I tell you what became of the hundred prisoners who were sent away after the Gau business? As they marched through the desert the Greek memlook looked at his list each morning, and said, ‘Hoseyn, Achmet, Foolan (like the Spanish Don Fulano, Mr. so and so), you are free; take off his chains.’ Well, the three or four men drop behind, where some arnouts strangle them out of sight. This is banishment to Fazoghlou. Do you remember le citoyen est élargi of the September massacres of Paris? Curious coincidence, is it not? Everyone is exasperated—the very Hareem talk of the government. It is in the air. I had not been five minutes in Keneh before I knew all this and much more. Of the end of Hajjee Sultan I will not speak till I have absolute certainty, but, I believe the proceeding was as I have described—set free in the desert and murdered by the way. I wish you to publish these facts, it is no secret to any but to those Europeans whose interests keep their eyes tightly shut, and they will soon have them opened. The blind rapacity of the present ruler will make him astonish the Franks some day, I think.

Wheat is now 400 piastres the ardeb up here; the little loaf, not quite so big as our penny roll, costs a piastre—about three-half-pence—and all in proportion. I need not say what the misery is. Remember that this is the second levy of 220 men within six months, each for sixty days, as well as the second seizure of camels; besides the conscription, which serves the same purpose, as the soldiers work on the Pasha’s works. But in Cairo they are paid—and well paid.

It is curious how news travels here. The Luxor people knew the day I left Alexandria, and the day I left Cairo, long before I came. They say here that Abu-l-Hajjaj gave me his hand from Keneh, because he would not finish his moolid without me. I am supposed to be specially protected by him, as is proved by my health being so far better here than anywhere else.

By the bye, Sheykh Alee Abab’deh told me that all the villages close on the Nile escaped the cholera almost completely, whilst those who were half or a quarter of a mile inland were ravaged. At Keneh 250 a day died; at Luxor one child was supposed to have died of it, but I know he had diseased liver for a year or more. In the desert the Bishareen and Abab’deh suffered more than the people at Cairo, and you know the desert is usually the place of perfect health; but fresh Nile water seems to be the antidote. Sheykh Yussuf laid the mortality at Keneh to the canal water, which the poor people drink there. I believe the fact is as Sheykh Alee told me.

Now I will say good-bye, for I am tired, and will write anon to the rest. Let Mutter have this. I was very poorly till I got above Siout, and then gradually mended—constant blood spitting and great weakness and I am very thin, but, by the protection of Abu-l-Hajjaj I suppose I am already much better, and begin to eat again. I have not been out yet since the first day, having much to do in the house to get to rights. I felt very dreary on Christmas-day away from you all, and Omar’s plum-pudding did not cheer me at all, as he hoped it would. He begs me to kiss your hand for him, and every one sends you salaam, and all lament that you are not the new Consul at Cairo.

Kiss my chicks, and love to you all. Janet, I hope is in Egypt ere this.

January 3, 1866: Maurice Duff Gordon

To Maurice Duff Gordon.

Luxor, January 3, 1866.

My Darling Maurice,

I was delighted to get your note, which arrived on New Year’s day in the midst of the hubbub of the great festival in honour of the Saint of Luxor. I wish you could have seen two young Arabs (real Arabs from the Hedjaz, in Arabia) ride and play with spears and lances. I never saw anything like it—a man who played the tom-fool stood in the middle, and they galloped round and round him, with their spears crossed and the points resting on the ground, in so small a circle that his clothes whisked round with the wind of the horses’ legs. Then they threw jereeds and caught them as they galloped: the beautiful thing was the perfect mastery of the horses: they were ‘like water in their hands,’ as Sheykh Hassan remarked. I perceived that I had never seen real horsemanship in my life before.

I am now in the ‘palace’ at Luxor with my dahabieh, ‘Arooset er-Ralee’ (the Darling Bride), under my windows; quite like a Pasha.

In coming up we had an alarm of robbers. Under the mountain called Gebel Foodah, we were entangled in shoals, owing to a change in the bed of the river, and forced to stay all night; and at three in the morning, the Reis sent in the boy to say he had seen a man creeping on all fours—would I fire my pistol? As my revolver had been stolen in Janet’s house, I was obliged to beg him to receive any possible troop of armed robbers very civilly, and to let them take what they pleased. However, Omar blazed away with your father’s old cavalry pistols (which had no bullets) and whether the robbers were frightened, or the man was only a wolf, we heard no more of the affair. My crew were horribly frightened, and kept awake till daybreak.

The last night before reaching Keneh, the town forty miles north of Luxor, my men held a grand fantasia on the bank. There was no wind, and we found a lot of old maize stalks; so there was a bonfire, and no end of drumming, singing and dancing. Even Omar relaxed his dignity so far as to dance the dance of the Alexandria young men; and very funny it all was. I laughed consumedly; especially at the modest airs and graces of a great lubberly fellow—one Hezayin, who acted the bride—in a representation of a Nubian wedding festivity. The new song of this year is very pretty—a declaration of love to a young Mohammed, sung to a very pretty tune. There is another, rather like the air of ‘Di Provenza al mar’ in the ‘Traviata,’ with extremely pretty words. As in England, every year has its new song, which all the boys sing about the streets.

I hope, darling, you are sapping this year, and intend to make up a bit for lost time. I hear you have lost no time in growing tall at all events—‘ill weeds, etc.’—you know Omar desires all sorts of messages to you.

January 15, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Monday, January 15, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

I hear that Mr. and Miss North are to be here in a day or two. I hope you may have sent my saddle by them, for I want it sadly—mine is just possible for a donkey, but quite too broken for a horse.

Two great Sheykhs of Bishareen and Abab’deh came here and picked me up out walking alone. We went and sat in a field, and they begged me to communicate to the Queen of England that they would join her troops if she would invade Egypt. One laid my hand on his hand and said ‘Thou hast 3,000 men in thy hand.’ The other rules 10,000. They say there are 30,000 Arabs (bedaween) ready to join the English, for they fear that the Viceroy will try to work and rob them like the fellaheen, and if so they will fight to the last, or else go off into Syria. I was rather frightened—for them, I mean, and told them that our Queen could do nothing till 600 Sheykhs and 400 Ameers had talked in public—all whose talk was printed and read at Stambool and Cairo, and that they must not think of such a thing from our Queen, but if things became bad, it would be better for them to go off into Syria. I urged great caution upon them, and I need not repeat that to you, as the lives of thousands may be endangered. It might be interesting to be known in high places and in profound secret, as one of the indications of what is coming here.

If the saddle comes, as I hope, I may very likely go up to Assouan, and leave the boat and servants, and go into the desert for a few days to see the place of the Bishareen. They won’t take anyone else: but you may be quite easy about me ‘in the face’ of a Sheykh-el-Arab. Handsome Sheykh Hassan, whom you saw at Cairo, will go with me. But if my saddle does not appear, I fear I should be too tired with riding a camel.

The little district of Koos, including Luxor, has been mulcted of camels, food for them and drivers, to the amount of 6,000 purses—last week—£18,000, fact. I cast up the account, and it tallied with what I got from a sub employé, nor is the discontent any longer whispered. Everyone talks aloud—and well they may.

February 7, 1886: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Tuesday, 7 Ramadan.

Dearest Mutter,

I have just received your letter of Christmas-day, and am glad to answer it with a really amended report of myself. I had a very slight return a week ago, but for the last five or six days the daily flushing and fever has also ceased. I sent for one of the Arab doctors of the Azizeeyeh steamer to see Omar, and myself also, and he was very attentive, and took a note of medicines to send me from Cairo by a confrère: and when I offered a fee he said, ‘God forbid—it is only our duty to do anything in the world for you.’ Likewise a very nice Dr. Ingram saw some of my worst cases for me, and gave me good advice and help; but I want better books—Kesteven is very useful, as far as it goes, but I want something more ausführlich and scientific. Ramadan is a great trouble to me, though Sheykh Yussuf tells the people not to fast, if I forbid it: but many are ill from having begun it, and one fine old man of about fifty-five died of apoplexy on the fourth night. My Christian patient is obstinate, and fasts, in spite of me, and will, I think, seal his fate; he was so much better after the blistering and Dr. Ingram’s mixture. I wish you could have seen a lad of eighteen or so, who came here to-day for medicine. I think I never saw such sweet frank, engaging manners, or ever heard any one express himself better: quite une nature distinguée, not the least handsome, but the most charming countenance and way of speaking.

My good friend the Maōhn spent the evening with me, and told me all the story of his marriage, though quite ‘unfit to meet the virtuous eyes of British propriety—’ as I read the other day in some paper apropos of I forget what—it will give you an idea of the feelings of a Muslim honnête homme, which Seleem is through and through. He knew his wife before he married her, she being twenty-five or twenty-six, and he a boy; she fell in love with him, and at seventeen he married her, and they have had ten children, all alive but two, and a splendid race they are. He told me how she courted him with glasses of sherbet and trays of sweatmeats, and how her mother proposed the marriage, and how she hesitated on account of the difference of age, but, of course, at last consented: all with the naïvest vanity in his own youthful attractions, and great extolling of her personal charms, and of her many virtues. When he was sent up here she would not, or could not, leave her children. On the Sitt’s arrival his slave girl was arrogant, and refused to kiss her hand, and spoke saucily of her age, whereupon Seleem gave her in marriage to a black man and pays for her support, as long as she likes to suckle the child he (Seleem) had by her, which child will in due time return to his house. Kurz, the fundamental idea in it all, in the mind of an upright man, is, that if a man ‘takes up’ with a woman at all, he must make himself responsible for her before the world; and above all for the fate of any child he may have by her (you see the Prophet of the Arabs did not contemplate ladies qui savent nager so well in the troubled waters of life as we are now blessed with. I don’t mean to say that many men are as scrupulous as my excellent friend Seleem, either here or even in our own moral society). All this was told with expressions quite incompatible with our manners, though not at all leste—and he expatiated on his wife’s personal charms in a very quaint way; the good lady is now hard upon sixty and looks it fully; but he evidently is as fond of her as ever. As a curious trait of primitive manners, he told me of her piety and boundless hospitality; how when some friends came late one evening, unexpectedly, and there was only a bit of meat, she killed a sheep and cooked it for them with her own hands. And this is a Cairene lady, and quite a lady too, in manners and appearance. The day I dined there she was dressed in very ragged, old cotton clothes, but spotlessly clean; and she waited on me with a kind, motherly pleasure, that quite took away the awkwardness I felt at sitting down while she stood. In a few days she and her husband are to dine with me, a thing which no Arab couple ever did before (I mean dine out together), and the old lady was immensely amused at the idea. Omar will cook and all male visitors will be sent to the kitchen. Now that I understand all that is said to me, and a great deal of the general conversation, it is much more amusing. Seleem Effendi jokes me a great deal about my blunders, especially my lack of politikeh, the Greek word for what we should call flummery; and my saying lazim (you must, or rather il faut), instead of humble entreaties. I told him to teach me better, but he laughed heartily, and said, ‘No, no, when you say lazim, it is lazim, and nobody wants the stick to force him to say Hadr (ready) O Sheykh-el-Arab, O Emeereh.’

Fancy my surprise the other day just when I was dictating letters to Sheykh Yussuf (letters of introduction for Ross’s inspecting agent) with three or four other people here, in walked Miss North (Pop) whom I have not seen since she was a child. She and her father were going up the second cataract. She has done some sketches which, though rather unskilful, were absolutely true in colour and effect, and are the very first that I have seen that are so. I shall see something of them on their return. She seemed very pleasant. Mr. North looked rather horrified at the turbaned society in which he found himself. I suppose it did look odd to English eyes.

We have had three days of the south wind, which the ‘Saturday Review’ says I am not to call Samoom; and I was poorly, and kept in bed two days with a cold. Apropos, I will give you the Luxor contribution towards the further confusion of the Samoom (or Simoom) controversy. I told Sheykh Yussuf that an English newspaper, written by particularly clever people, said that I was wrong to call the bad wind here ‘Samoom,’ (it was in an article on Palgrave’s book, I think). Sheykh Yussuf said, ‘True, oh lady, no doubt those learned gentlemen’ (politely saluting them with his hand) ‘thought one such as thou shouldest have written classical Arabic (Arabi fossieh), and have called it “al Daboor;” nevertheless, it is proper to write it “Samoom,” not, as some do “Simoom,” which is the plural of sim (poison).’ I shook my head, and said, I did not recollect al Daboor. Then my Reis, sitting at the door, offered his suggestion. ‘Probably the English, who it is well known are a nation of sailors, use the name given to the land wind by el-baharieh (the boatmen), and call it el-mereeseh.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘the clever gentlemen say that I am wrong altogether, and never can have seen a real Samoom, for that would have killed me in ten minutes.’ Hereupon Sheykh Mohammed el-Abab’deh, who is not nearly so polished as his brother Hassan, burst into a regular bedawee roar of laughter, and said, ‘Yah! do the Ganassil (Europeans) take thee for a rat, oh lady? Whoever heard of el Beni Adam (the children of Adam) dying of the wind? Men die of thirst quicker when the Samoom blows and they have no water. But no one ever died of the wind alone, except the rats—they do.’ I give you the opinion of three ‘representative men—’ scholar, sailor, and bedawee; if that helps you to a solution of the controversy.

We have just had a scene, rather startling to notions about fatalism, etc. Owing to the importation of a good deal of cattle from the Soudan, there is an expectation of the prevalence of small-pox, and the village barbers are busy vaccinating in all directions to prevent the infection brought, either by the cattle or, more likely, by their drivers. Now, my maid had told me she had never been vaccinated, and I sent for Hajjee Mahmood to cut my hair and vaccinate her. To my utter amazement the girl, who had never shown any religious bigotry, and does not fast, or make any demonstrations, refused peremptorily. It appears that the priests and sisters appointed by the enlightened administration of Prussia instil into their pupils and penitents that vaccination is a ‘tempting of God.’ Oh oui, she said, je sais bien que chez nous mes parents pouvaient recevoir un procès verbal, mais il vaut mieux cela que d’aller contre la volonté de Dieu. Si Dieu le veut, j’aurai la petite-vérole, et s’il ne veut pas, je ne l’aurai pas. I scolded her pretty sharply, and said it was not only stupid, but selfish. ‘But what can one do?’ as Hajjee Mahmood said, with a pitying shake of his head; ‘these Christians are so ignorant!’ He blushed, and apologized to me, and said, ‘It is not their fault; all this want of sense is from the priests who talk folly to them for money, and to keep them afraid before themselves. Poor things, they don’t know the Word of God.—“Help thyself, oh my servant, and I will help thee.”’ This is the second contest I have had on this subject. Last year it was with a Copt, who was all Allah kereem and so on about his baby, with his child of four dying of small-pox. ‘Oh, man,’ said Sheykh Yussuf, ‘if the wall against which I am now sitting were to shake above my head, should I fold my feet under me and say Allah kereem, or should I use the legs God has given me to escape from it?’

I had a visit the other day from a lady who, as I was informed, had been a harlot in Siout. She has repented, and married a converted Copt. They are a droll pair of penitents, so very smart in their dress and manner. But no one se scandalise at their antecedents—neither is it proper to repent in sackcloth and ashes, or to confess sins, except to God alone. You are not to indulge in telling them to others; it is an offence. Repent inwardly, and be ashamed to show it before the people—ask pardon of God only. A little of this would do no harm in Europe, methinks.

Here is a pretty story for you from the Hadeth en-Nebbee (sayings of the Prophet). ‘Two prophets were sitting together, and discoursing of prayer and the difficulty of fixing the attention entirely on the act. One said to the other, “Not even for the duration of two rekahs (prayers ending with the prostration and Allah akbar) can a man fix his mind on God alone.” The other said, “Nay, but I can do it!” “Say then two rekahs,” replied the elder of the two; “I will give thee my cloak.” Now he wore two cloaks—a new handsome red one and an old shabby blue one. The younger prophet rose, raised his hands to his head, said Allah akbar, and bent to the ground for his first rekah; as he rose again he thought “Will he give me the red cloak or the blue, I wonder?”’ It is very stupid of me not to write down all the pretty stories I hear, but this one is a capital specimen of Arab wit. Some day I must bring over Omar with me, Inshallah, to England, and he will tell you stories like Scheherazade herself. A jolly Nubian Alim told me the other night how in his village no man ever eats meat, except on Bairam day: but one night a woman had a piece of meat given her by a traveller; she put it in the oven and went out. During her absence her husband came in and smelt it, and as it was just the time of the eshé (first prayers one hour after sunset), he ran up to the hill outside the village, and began to chaunt forth the tekbeer with all his might—Allah akbar, Allah akbar, etc. etc., till the people ran to see what was the matter. ‘Why, to-day is Bairam,’ says he. ‘Where is thy witness, O man?’ ‘The meat in the oven—the meat in the oven.’

February 15, 1866: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Luxor, February 15, 1866.

Dearest Mutter,

I have only time for a short letter to say that the cold weather is over and that I continue to improve, not very fast, but still very sensibly.

My young Frenchman turns out to be a M. Brune grand prix de Rome, an architect, and is a very nice fellow indeed, and a thorough gentleman. His odd awkward manner proved to be mere vexation at finding himself quartered nolens volens on a stranger, and a woman; but we have made great friends, and I have made him quite happy by telling him that he shall pay his share of the food. He was going to hurry off from shyness though he had begun a work here by which I fancy he hopes to get Kudos. I see he is poor and very properly proud. He goes out to the temple at sunrise, and returns to dinner at dark, and works well, and his drawings are very clever. In short, I am as much obliged to the French Consul for sending me such an intelligent man as I was vexed at first. An homme sérieux with an absorbing pursuit is always good company in the long run. Moreover M. Brune behaves like a perfect gentleman in every way. So tout est pour le mieux.

I am sorry to say that Marie has become so excessively bored, dissatisfied, and, she says, ill, that I am going to send her back rather than be worried so—and damit hats eine ende of European maids. Of course an ignorant girl must be bored to death here—a land of no amusements and no flirtation is unbearable. I shall borrow a slave of a friend here, an old black woman who is quite able and more than willing to serve me, and when I go down to Cairo I will get either a ci-devant slave or an elderly Arab woman. Dr. Patterson strongly advised me to do so last year. He had one who has been thirteen years his housekeeper, an old bedaweeyeh, I believe, and as I now am no longer looked upon as a foreigner, I shall be able to get a respectable Arab woman, a widow or a divorced woman of a certain age who will be too happy to have ‘a good home,’ as our maids say. I think I know one, a certain Fatoomeh, a widow with no children who does washing and needlework in Cairo. You need not be at all uneasy. I shall be taken good care of if I fall ill, much better than I should get from a European in a sulky frame of mind. Hajjee Ali has very kindly offered to take Marie down to Cairo and start her off to Alexandria, whence Ross’s people can send her home. If she wants to stay in Alexandria and get placed by the nuns who piously exhorted her to extort ninety francs a month from me, so much the better for me. Ali refuses to take a penny from me for her journey—besides bringing me potatoes and all sorts of things: and if I remonstrate he says he and all his family and all they have is mine, in consequence of my treatment of his brother.

You will be amused and pleased to hear how Sheykh Yussuf was utterly puzzled and bewildered by the civilities he received from the travellers this year, till an American told Mustapha I had written a book which had made him (the American) wish well to the poor people of this country, and desire to behave more kindly to them than would have been the case before.

To-morrow is the smaller Bairam, and I shall have all the Hareem here to visit me.

Two such nice Englishmen called the other day and told me they lived in Hertford Street opposite Lady D. G.’s and saw Alexander go in and out, and met Maurice in the gardens. It gave me a terrible twinge of Heimweh, but I thought it so kind and pretty and herzlich of them to come and tell me how Alexander and Maurice looked as they went along the street.

February 22, 1866: Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.

February 22, 1866.

Dearest Janet,

I received your letter of the 4th inst. yesterday. I am much distressed not to hear a better account of you. Why don’t you go to Cairo for a time? Your experience of your German confirms me (if I needed it) in my resolution to have no more Europeans unless I should find one ‘seasoned.’ The nuisance is too great. I shall borrow a neighbour’s slave for my stay here and take some one in Cairo. My dress will do very well in native hands.

I am at last getting really better again, I hope. We have had a cold winter, but not trying. There has not been much wind, and the weather has been very steady and clear. I wish I had Palgrave’s book. Hajjee Ali was to bring up my box, but it had not arrived when he sailed. I will send down the old saddle whenever I can find a safe opportunity and have received the other.

Many thanks for all the various detachments of newspapers, which were a great solace. I wish you would give me your photo—large size—to hang up with Rainie and Maurice here and in the boat. Like the small one you gave me at Soden, you said you had some copies big.

My doctoring business has become quite formidable. I should like to sell my practice to any ‘rising young surgeon.’ It brings in a very fair income of vegetables, eggs, turkeys pigeons, etc.

How is the Shereef of Mecca’s horse? I ambition to ride that holy animal.

February 22, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, February 22, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

The weather here is just beginning to get warm, and I of course to get better. There has been a good deal of nervous headache here this Ramadan. I had to attend the Kadee, and several more. My Turkish neighbour at Karnac has got a shaitan (devil), i.e. epileptic fits, and I was sent for to exorcise him, which I am endeavouring to do with nitrate of silver, etc.; but I fear imagination will kill him, so I advise him to go to Cairo, and leave the devil-haunted house. I have this minute killed the first snake of this year—a sign of summer.

I was so pleased to see two Mr. Watsons—your opposite neighbours—who said they saw you every morning go down the street—ojala! that I did so too! I liked Mr. and Mrs. Webb of Newstead Abbey very much; nice, hearty, pleasant, truly English people.

There have not been above twenty or thirty boats up this year—mostly Americans. There are some here now, very nice people, with four little children, who create quite an excitement in the place, and are ‘mashallahed’ no end. Their little fair faces do look very pretty here, and excite immense admiration.

Seyd has just come in to take my letter to the steamer which is now going down. So addio, dearest Alick. I am much better but still weakish, and very triste at my long separation.

March 6, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Tuesday, March 6, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

I write to be ready for the last down steamer which will be here in a few days. Mr. and Miss North are here working hard at sketching, and M. Brune will take a place in their Dahabieh (my old Zint el Bahreyn), and leave me in six or seven days. I shall quite grieve to lose his company. If ever you or yours fall in with him, pray cultivate his acquaintance, he is very clever, very hard working, and a ‘thorough-bred gentleman’ as Omar declares. We are quite low-spirited at parting after a month spent together at Thebes.

I hear that Olagnier has a big house in Old Cairo and will lodge me. The Norths go to-day (Thursday) and M. Brune does not go with them as he intended, but will stay on and finish a good stroke of work and take his chance of a conveyance.

I spent yesterday out in Mustapha’s tent among the bean gatherers, and will go again. I think it does me good and is not too long a ride. The weather has set in suddenly very hot, which rather tries everybody, but gloriously fine clear air. I hope you will get this, as old fat Hassan will take it to the office in Cairo himself—for the post is very insecure indeed. I have written very often, if you don’t get my letters I suppose they interest the court of Pharaoh.

March 17, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Thebes, March 17, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

The high winds have begun with a vengeance and a great bore they are.

I went a few days ago out to Medarnoot, and lunched in Mustapha’s tent, among his bean harvest. I was immensely amused by the man who went with me on to Medarnoot, one Sheriff, formerly an illustrious robber, now a watchman and very honest man. He rode a donkey, about the size of Stirling’s wee pony, and I laughed, and said, ‘The man should carry the ass.’ No sooner said than done, Sheriff dismounted, or rather let his beast down from between his legs, shouldered the donkey, and ran on. His way of keeping awake is original; the nights are still cold, so he takes off all his clothes, rolls them up and lays them under his head, and the cold keeps him quite lively. I never saw so powerful, active and healthy an animal. He was full of stories how he had had 1,000 stripes of the courbash on his feet and 500 on his loins at one go. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why, I stuck a knife into a cawass who ordered me to carry water-melons; I said I was not his donkey; he called me worse: my blood got up, and so!—and the Pasha to whom the cawass belonged beat me. Oh, it was all right, and I did not say “ach” once, did I?’ (addressing another). He clearly bore no malice, as he felt no shame. He has a grand romance about a city two days’ journey from here, in the desert, which no one finds but by chance, after losing his way; and where the ground is strewed with valuable anteekehs (antiquities). I laughed, and said, ‘Your father would have seen gold and jewels.’ ‘True,’ said he, ‘when I was young, men spit on a statue or the like, when they turned it up in digging, and now it is a fortune to find one.’

March 31, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

March 31, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

As for me I am much better again; the cough has subsided, I really think the Arab specific, camel’s milk, has done me great good. I have mended ever since I took it. It has the merit of being quite delicious. Yesterday I was much amused when I went for my afternoon’s drink, to find Sheriff in a great taking at having been robbed by a woman, under his very nose. He saw her gathering hummuz from a field under his charge, and went to order her off, whereupon she coolly dropped the end of her boordeh which covered the head and shoulders, effectually preventing him from going near her; made up her bundle and walked off. His respect for the Hareem did not, however, induce him to refrain from strong language.

M. Brune has made very pretty drawings of the mosque here, both outside and in; it is a very good specimen of modern Arab architecture; and he won’t believe it could be built without ground plan, elevations, etc., which amuses the people here, who build without any such inventions.

The harvest here is splendid this year, such beans and wheat, and prices have fallen considerably in both: but meat, butter, etc., remain very dear. My fame as a Hakeemeh has become far too great, and on market-days I have to shut up shop. Yesterday a very handsome woman came for medicine to make her beautiful, as her husband had married another who teazed her, and he rather neglected her. And a man offered me a camel load of wheat if I would read something over him and his wife to make them have children. I don’t try to explain to them how very irrational they are but use the more intelligible argument that all such practices savour of the Ebu er Rukkeh (equivalent to black art), and are haram to the greatest extent; besides, I add, being ‘all lies’ into the bargain. The applicants for child-making and charm-reading are Copts or Muslims, quite in equal numbers, and appear alike indifferent as to what ‘Book’: but all but one have been women; the men are generally perfectly rational about medicine and diet.

I find there is a good deal of discontent among the Copts with regard to their priests and many of their old customs. Several young men have let out to me at a great rate about the folly of their fasts, and the badness and ignorance of their priests. I believe many turn Muslim from a real conviction that it is a better religion than their own, and not as I at first thought merely from interest; indeed, they seldom gain much by it, and often suffer tremendous persecution from their families; even they do not escape the rationalizing tendencies now abroad in Christendom. Then their early and indissoluble marriages are felt to be a hardship: a boy is married at eight years old, perhaps to his cousin aged seventeen (I know one here in that case), and when he grows up he wishes it had been let alone. A clever lad of seventeen propounded to me his dissatisfaction, and seemed to lean to Islam. I gave him an Arabic New Testament, and told him to read that first, and judge for himself whether he could not still conform to the Church of his own people, and inwardly believe and try to follow the Gospels. I told him it was what most Christians had to do, as every man could not make a sect for himself, while few could believe everything in any Church. I suppose I ought to have offered him the Thirty-nine Articles, and thus have made a Muslim of him out of hand. He pushed me a little hard about several matters, which he says he does not find in ‘the Book’: but on the whole he is well satisfied with my advice.

Coptic Palm Sunday, April 1.

We hear that Fadil Pasha received orders at Assouan to go up to Khartoum in Giaffar Pasha’s place: it is a civil way of killing a fat old Turk, if it is true. He was here a week or two ago. My informant is one of my old crew who was in Fadil Pasha’s boat.

I shall wait to get a woman-servant till I go to Cairo, the women here cannot iron or sew; so, meanwhile, the wife of Abd el-Kader, does my washing, and Omar irons; and we get on capitally. Little Achmet waits, etc., and I think I am more comfortable so than if I had a maid,—it would be no use to buy a slave, as the trouble of teaching her would be greater than the work she would do for me.

My medical reputation has become far too great, and all my common drugs—Epsom salts, senna, aloes, rhubarb, quassia—run short. Especially do all the poor, tiresome, ugly old women adore me, and bore me with their aches and pains. They are always the doctor’s greatest plague. The mark of confidence is that they now bring the sick children, which was never known before, I believe, in these parts. I am sure it would pay a European doctor to set up here; the people would pay him a little, and there would be good profit from the boats in the winter. I got turkeys when they were worth six or eight shillings apiece in the market, and they were forced upon me by the fellaheen. I must seal up this for fear the boat should come; it will only pick up M. Brune and go on.

April, 1866: Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.

Eed el Kebeer, Wednesday, April, 1866.

Dearest Janet,

I had not heard a word of Henry’s illness till Mr. Palgrave arrived and told me, and also that he was better. Alhamdulillah! I only hope that you are not knocked up, my darling. I am not ill, but still feel unaccountably weak and listless. I don’t cough much, and have got fatter on my régime of camel’s milk,—so I hope I may get over the languor. The box has not made its appearance. What a clever fellow Mr. Palgrave is! I never knew such a hand at languages. The folks here are in admiration at his Arabic. I hope you will see M. Brune. I am sure you would like him. He is a very accomplished and gentlemanly man.

You have never told me your plans for this year or whether I shall find you when I go down. The last three days the great heat has begun and I am accordingly feeling better. I have just come home from the Bairam early prayer out in the burial-place, at which Palgrave also assisted. He is unwell, and tells me he leaves Luxor to-morrow morning. I shall stay on till I am too hot here, as evidently the summer suits me.

Many thanks for Miss Berry and for the wine, which makes a very pleasant change from the rather bad claret I have got. Palgrave’s book I have read through hard, as he wished to take it back for you. It is very amusing.

If you come here next winter Mustapha hopes you will bring a saddle, and ride ‘all his horses.’ I think I could get you a very good horse from a certain Sheykh Abdallah here.

Well, I must say good-bye. Kulloo sana intee tayib, love to Henry.

April, 1866: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Bairam, April, 1866.

Dearest Mutter,

I write this to go down by Mr. Palgrave who leaves to-morrow. He has been with Mustapha Bey conducting an enquiry into Mustapha A’gha’s business. Mariette Bey struck Mustapha, and I and some Americans took it ill and wrote a very strong complaint to our respective Consuls. Mariette denied the blow and the words ‘liar, and son of a dog’—so the American and English Consuls sent up Palgrave as commissioner to enquire into the affair, and the Pasha sent Mustapha Bey with him. Palgrave is very amusing of course, and his knowledge of languages is wonderful, Sheykh Yussuf says few Ulema know as much of the literature and niceties of grammar and composition. Mustapha Bey is a darling; he knew several friends of mine, Hassan Effendi, Mustapha Bey Soubky, and others, so we were friends directly.

I have not yet got a woman-servant, but I don’t miss it at all; little Achmet is very handy, Mahommed’s slave girl washes, and Omar irons and cleans the house and does housemaid, and I have kept on the meek cook, Abd el-Kader, whom I took while the Frenchman was here. I had not the heart to send him away; he is such a meskeen. He was a smart travelling waiter, but his brother died, leaving a termagant widow with four children, and poor Abd el-Kader felt it his duty to bend his neck to the yoke, married her, and has two more children. He is a most worthy, sickly, terrified creature.

I have heard that a decent Copt here wants to sell a black woman owing to reverses of fortune, and that she might suit me. Sheykh Yussuf is to negotiate the affair and to see if the woman herself likes me for a mistress, and I am to have her on trial for a time, and if I like her and she me, Sheykh Yussuf will buy her with my money in his name. I own I have very little scruple about the matter, as I should consider her price as an advance of two or three years’ wages and tear the paper of sale as soon as she had worked her price out, which I think would be a fair bargain. But I must see first whether Feltass (the Copt) really wants to sell her or only to get a larger price than is fair, in which case I will wait till I go to Cairo. Anything is better than importing a European who at once thinks one is at her mercy on account of the expense of the journey back.

I went out this morning to the early prayer of Bairam day, held in the burial-place. Mahmoud ibn-Mustapha preached, but the boys and the Hareem made such a noise behind us that I could not hear the sermon. The weather has set in hot these last days, and I am much the better. It seems strange that what makes others languid seems to strengthen me. I have been very weak and languid all the time, but the camel’s milk has fattened me prodigiously, to Sherayeff’s great delight; and the last hot days have begun to take away the miserable feeling of fatigue and languor.

Palgrave is not well at all, and his little black boy he fears will die, and several people in the steamer are ill, but in Luxor there is no sickness to speak of, only chronic old women, so old and ugly and achy, that I don’t know what to do with them, except listen to their complaints, which begin, ‘Ya ragleh.’ Ragel is man, so ragleh is the old German Männin, and is the civil way of addressing a Saeedee woman. To one old body I gave a powder wrapped up in a fragment of a Saturday Review. She came again and declared Mashallah! the hegab (charm) was a powerful one, for though she had not been able to wash off all the fine writing from the paper, even that little had done her a deal of good. I regret that I am unable to inform you what the subject of the article in the Saturday which had so drastic an effect.

Good-bye, dearest Mutter, I must go and take a sleep before the time of receiving the visits of to-day (the great festival). I was up before sunrise to see the prayer, so must have a siesta in a cool place. To-morrow morning early this will go. I hope you got a letter I sent ten days or so ago.

May 10, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, May 10, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

The real summer heat—the Skems el-Kebeer (big sun) has fairly set in, and of course I am all the better. You would give my camel a good backsheesh if you saw how prodigiously fat I have grown on her milk; it beats codliver-oil hollow. You can drink a gallon without feeling it, it is so easy of digestion.

I have lent the dahabieh to Mustapha and to one or two more, to go to Keneh on business, and when she returns (which will be to-day) I shall make ready to depart too, and drop down stream. Omar wants me to go down to Damietta, to ‘amuse my mind and dilate my stomach’ a little; and I think of doing so.

Palgrave was here about a fortnight ago, on Mustapha’s and Mariette’s business. ‘By God! this English way is wonderful,’ said a witness, ‘that English Bey questioned me till my stomach came out.’ I loved Mustapha Bey, who was with him; such a nice, kind, gentle creature, and very intelligent and full of good sense. I rejoice to hear that he returns my liking, and has declared himself ‘one of my darweeshes.’ Talking of darweeshes reminds me of the Festival of Sheykh Gibrieel this year. I had forgotten the day, but in the evening some people came for me to go and eat some of the meat of the Sheykh, who is also a good patron of mine, they say; being a poor man’s saint, and of a humble spirit, it is said he favours me. There was plenty of meat and melocheea and bread; and then zikrs of different kinds, and a Gama el Fokara (assembly of the poor). Gama is the true word for Mosque—i.e., Meeting, which consists in a great circle of men seated thick on the ground, with two poets facing each other, who improvise religious verses. On this occasion the rule of the game was to end each stanza with a word having the sound of wahed (one), or el Had (the first). Thus one sung: ‘Let a man take heed how he walks,’ etc., etc.; and ‘pray to God not to let him fall,’ which sound like Had. And so they went on, each chanting a verse alternately. One gesticulated almost as much as an Italian and pronounced beautifully; the other was quiet, but had a nice voice, and altogether it was very pretty. At the end of each verse the people made a sort of chorus, which was sadly like the braying of asses. The zikr of the Edfoo men was very curious. Our people did it quietly, and the moonsheed sang very sweetly—indeed ‘the song of the moonsheed is the sugar in the sherbet to the Zikkeer,’ said a man who came up when it was over, streaming with perspiration and radiant with smiles. Some day I will write to you the whole ‘grund Idee’ of a zikr, which is, in fact, an attempt to make present ‘the communion of saints,’ dead or living. As I write arrives the Arooset er-rallee, and my crew furl her big sail quite ‘Bristol fashion.’ My men have come together again, some from Nubia and some from the Delta; and I shall go down with my old lot.

Omar and Achmet have implored me not to take another maid at all; they say they live like Pashas now they have only the lady to please; that it will be a pleasure to ‘lick my shoes clean,’ whereas the boots of the Cameriera were intolerable. The feeling of the Arab servants towards European colleagues is a little like that of ‘niggers’ about ‘mean whites’—mixed hatred, fear, and scorn. The two have done so well to make me comfortable that I have no possible reason for insisting on encumbering myself with ‘an old man of the sea,’ in the shape of a maid; and the difference in cost is immense. The one dish of my dinner is ample relish to their bread and beans, while the cooking for a maid, and her beer and wine, cost a great deal. Omar irons my clothes very tidily, and little Achmet cleans the house as nicely as possible. I own I am quite as much relieved by the absence of the ‘civilized element’ as my retainers are.

Did I describe the Coptic Good Friday? Imagine 450 Rekahs in church! I have seen many queer things, but nothing half so queer as the bobbing of the Copts.

I went the other day to the old church six or eight miles off, where they buried the poor old Bishop who died a week ago. Abu Khom, a Christian shaheed (martyr), is buried there. He appeared to Mustapha’s father when lost in the desert, and took him safe home. On that occasion he was well mounted, and robed all in white, with a litham in over his face. No one dares to steal anything near his tomb, not one ear of corn. He revealed himself long ago to one of the descendants of Abu-l-Hajjaj, and to this day every Copt who marries in Luxor gives a pair of fowls to the family of that Muslim in remembrance of Abu Khom.

I shall leave Luxor in five or six days—and write now to stop all letters in Cairo.

I don’t know what to do with my sick; they come from forty miles off, and sometimes twenty or thirty people sleep outside the house. I dined with the Maōhn last night—‘pot luck’—and was much pleased. The dear old lady was so vexed not to have a better dinner for me that she sent me a splendid tray of baklaweh this morning to make up for it.

June 22, 1866: Maurice Duff Gordon

To Maurice Duff Gordon.

Cairo, June 22, 1866.

Maurice my Darling,

I send you a Roman coin which a man gave me as a fee for medical attendance. I hope you will like it for your watch-chain. I made our Coptic goldsmith bore a hole in it. Why don’t you write to me, you young rascal? I am now living in my boat, and I often wish for you here to donkey ride about with me. I can’t write you a proper letter now as Omar is waiting to take this up to Mr. Palgrave with the drawings for your father. Omar desires his best salaam to you and to Rainie, and is very much disappointed that you are not coming out in the winter to go up to Luxor. We had a hurricane coming down the Nile, and a boat behind us sank. We only lost an anchor, and had to wait and have it fished up by the fishermen of a neighbouring village. In places the water was so shallow that the men had to push the boat over by main force, and all went into the river. The captain and I shouted out, Islam el Islam, equivalent to, ‘Heave away, boys.’ There are splendid illuminations about to take place here, because the Pasha has got leave to make his youngest boy his successor, and people are ordered to rejoice, which they do with much grumbling—it will cost something enormous.

July 10, 1866: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Off Boulak, Cairo, July 10, 1866.

Dearest Mutter,

I am much better again. My cold went off without a violent illness and I was only weak and nervous. I am very comfortable here, anchored off Boulak, with my Reis and one sailor who cleans and washes my clothes which Omar irons, as at Luxor, as he found the washerwomen here charged five francs a dozen for all small things and more for dresses. A bad hashash boy turned Achmet’s head, who ran away for two days and spent a dollar in riotous living; he returned penitent, and got no fatted calf, but dry bread and a confiscation of his new clothes.

The heat, when I left Luxor, was prodigious. I was detained three days by the death of Sheykh Yussuf’s poor little wife and baby (in childbirth) so I was forced to stay and eat the funeral feast, and be present at the Khatmeh (reading of the Koran on the third night), or it would not have seemed kind. The Kadee gave me a very curious prayer-book, the Guide of the Faithful, written in Darfour! in beautiful characters, and with very singular decorations, and in splendid binding. It contains the names of all the prophets and of the hundred appellations of Mohammed, and is therefore a powerful hegab or talisman. He requested me never to give it away and always to keep it with me. Such books cannot be bought with money at all. I also bought a most beautiful hegab of cornelian set in enamel, the verse of the throne splendidly engraved, and dated 250 years ago. I sent over by Palgrave to Alick M. Brune’s lovely drawings of Luxor and Karnac, and to Maurice a gold coin which I received as a fee from an old Bedawee.

It was so hot that I could not face the ride up to Keneh, when all my friends there came to fetch me, nor could I go to Siout. I never felt such heat. At Benisouef I went to see our Maōhn’s daughter married to another Maōhn there; it was a pleasant visit. The master of the house was out, and his mother and wife received me like one of the family; such a pretty woman and such darling children!—a pale, little slight girl of five, a sturdy boy of four, and a baby of one year old. The eager hospitality of the little creatures was quite touching. The little girl asked to have on her best frock, and then she stood before me and fanned me seriously and diligently, and asked every now and then, ‘Shall I make thee a sherbet?’ ‘Shall I bring thee a coffee?’ and then questions about grandpapa and grand mamma, and Abd el-Hameed and Abd el-Fattah; while the boy sat on his heels before me and asked questions about my family in his baby talk, and assured me it was a good day to him, and wanted me to stay three days, and to sleep with them. Their father came in and gave each an ashara (10 foddahs, ½ piastre) which, after consulting together, they tied in the corner of my handkerchief; ‘to spend on my journey.’ The little girl took such care of my hat and gloves and shoes, all very strange garments to her, but politeness was stronger than curiosity with the little things. I breakfasted with them all next day, and found much cookery going on for me. I took a doll for my little friend Ayoosheh, and some sugar-plums for Mohammed, but they laid them aside in order to devote themselves to the stranger, and all quietly, and with no sort of show-off or obtrusiveness. Even the baby seemed to have the instinct of hospitality, and was full of smiles. It was all of a piece with the good old lady, their grandmother at Luxor, who wanted to wash my clothes for me herself, because I said the black slave of Mohammed washed badly. Remember that to do ‘menial offices’ for a guest is an honour and pleasure, and not derogatory at all here. The ladies cook for you, and say, ‘I will cook my best for thee.’ The worst is that they stuff one so. Little Ayoosheh asked after my children, and said, ‘May God preserve them for thee! Tell thy little girl that Mohammed and I love her from afar off.’ Whereupon Mohammed declared that in a few years, please God, when he should be balal (marriageable) he would marry her and live with me. When I went back to the boat the Effendi was ill with asthma, and I would not let him go with me in the heat (a polite man accompanies an honoured guest back to his house or boat, or tent). So the little boy volunteered, and we rode off on the Effendi’s donkey, which I had to bestride, with Mohammed on the hump of the saddle before me. He was delighted with the boat, of course, and romped and played about till we sailed, when his slave took him home. Those children gave me a happy day with their earnest, gracious hospitality.