MEMOIR (continued 8)

February 3, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, February 3, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

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

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

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

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

March 6, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Luxor, March 6, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

March 7, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

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

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

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

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

April 12, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Luxor, April 12, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 19, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, April 19, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

I have been much amused lately by a new acquaintance, who, in romances of the last century, would be called an ‘Arabian sage.’ Sheykh Abdurrachman lives in a village half a day’s journey off, and came over to visit me and to doctor me according to the science of Galen and Avicenna. Fancy a tall, thin, graceful man, with a grey beard and liquid eyes, absorbed in studies of the obsolete kind, a doctor of theology, law, medicine and astronomy. We spent three days in arguing and questioning; I consented to swallow a potion or two which he made up before me, of very innocent materials. My friend is neither a quack nor superstitious, and two hundred years ago would have been a better physician than most in Europe. Indeed I would rather swallow his physic now than that of many a M.D. I found him like all the learned theologians I have known, extremely liberal and tolerant. You can conceive nothing more interesting and curious than the conversation of a man learned and intelligent, and utterly ignorant of all our modern Western science. If I was pleased with him, he was enchanted with me, and swore by God that I was a Mufti indeed, and that a man could nowhere spend time so delightfully as in conversation with me. He said he had been acquainted with two or three Englishmen who had pleased him much, but that if all Englishwomen were like me the power must necessarily be in our hands, for that my akl (brain, intellect) was far above that of the men he had known. He objected to our medicine that it seemed to consist in palliatives, which he rather scorned, and aimed always at a radical cure. I told him that if he had studied anatomy he would know that radical cures were difficult of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or some European language, and that he had not learned our Ilm (science) also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture (consisting of liquorice, cummin and soda) just as the sun entered a particular house, and the moon was in some favourable aspect. He praised to me his friend, a learned Jew of Cairo. I could have fancied myself listening to Abu Suleyman of Cordova, in the days when we were the barbarians and the Arabs were the learned race. There is something very winning in the gentle, dignified manners of all the men of learning I have seen here, and their homely dress and habits make it still more striking. I longed to photograph my Sheykh as he sat on the divan pulling MSS. out of his bosom to read me the words of El-Hakeem Lokman, or to overwhelm me with the authority of some physician whose very name I had never heard.

The hand of the Government is awfully heavy upon us. All this week the people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because three hundred and ten men are to go to-morrow to work on the railroad below Siout. This green corn is, of course, valueless to sell and unwholesome to eat; so the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to bitterness at the last moment. From a neighbouring village all the men are gone, and seven more are wanted to make up the corvée. The population of Luxor is 1,000 males of all ages, so you can guess how many strong men are left after three hundred and ten are taken.

I don’t like to think too much about seeing you and Maurice next winter for fear I should be disappointed. If I am too sick and wretched I can hardly wish you to come because I know what a nuisance it is to be with one always coughing and panting, and unable to do like other people. But if I pick up tolerably this summer I shall indeed be glad to see you and him once more.

This house is falling sadly to decay, which produces snakes and scorpions. I sent for the hawee (snake-catcher) who caught a snake, but who can’t conjure the scorpions out of their holes. One of my fat turkeys has just fallen a victim, and I am in constant fear for little Bob, only he is always in Omar’s arms. I think I described to you the festival of Sheykh Gibrieel: the dinner, and the poets who improvised; this year I had a fine piece of declamation in my honour. A real calamity is the loss of our good Maōhn, Seleem Effendi. The Mudir hailed him from his steamer to go to Keneh directly, with no further notice. We hoped some good luck for him, and so it would have been to a Turk. He is made overseer over the poor people at the railway work, and only gets two pounds five shillings per month additional, he has to keep a horse and a donkey, and to buy them and to hire a sais, and he does not know how to squeeze the fellaheen. It is true ‘however close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again,’ which means that even the poorest devils at the works can be beaten into giving a little more; but our dear Seleem, God bless him, will be ruined and made miserable by his promotion. I had a very woeful letter from him yesterday.

May 15, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, May 15, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

All the Christendom of Upper Egypt is in a state of excitement, owing to the arrival of the Patriarch of Cairo, who is now in Luxor. My neighbour, Mikaeel, entertains him, and Omar has been busily decorating his house and arranging the illumination of his garden, and to-day is gone to cook the confectionery, he being looked upon as the person best acquainted with the customs of the great. Last night the Patriarch sent for me, and I went to kiss his hand, but I won’t go again. It was a very droll caricature of the thunders of the Vatican. Poor Mikaeel had planned that I was to dine with the Patriarch, and had borrowed my silver spoons, etc., etc., in that belief. But the representative of St. Mark is furious against the American missionaries who have converted some twenty Copts at Koos, and he could not bring himself to be decently civil to a Protestant. I found a coarse-looking man seated on a raised divan smoking his chibouk, on his right were some priests on a low divan; I went up and kissed his hand and was about to sit by the priests, but he roughly ordered a cawass to put a wooden chair off the carpet to his left, at a distance from him, and told me to sit there. I looked round to see whether any of my neighbours were present, and I saw the consternation in their faces so, not wishing to annoy them, I did as if I did not perceive the affront, and sat down and talked for half an hour to the priests, and then took leave. I was informed that the Catholics were naas mesakeen (poor inoffensive people), and that the Muslims at least were of an old religion, but that the Protestants ate meat all the year round, ‘like dogs’—‘or Muslims,’ put in Omar, who stood behind my chair and did not relish the mention of dogs and the ‘English religion’ in one sentence. As I went the Patriarch called for dinner, it seems he had told Mikaeel he would not eat with me. It is evidently ‘a judgment’ of a most signal nature that I should be snubbed for the offences of missionaries, but it has caused some ill blood; the Kadee and Sheykh Yussuf and the rest, who all intended to do the civil to the Patriarch, now won’t go near him on account of his rudeness to me. He has come up in a steamer, at the Pasha’s expense, with a guard of cawasses, and, of course, is loud in praise of the Government, though he failed in getting the Moudir to send all the Protestants of Koos to the public works, or the army.

From what he said before me about the Abyssinians, and still more, from what he said to others about the English prisoners up there, I am convinced that the place to put the screw on is the Batrarchane (Patriarch’s palace) at Cairo, and that the priests are at the bottom of that affair. [350] He boasted immensely of the obedience and piety of El Habbesh (the Abyssinians).

Saturday.—Yesterday I heard a little whispered grumbling about the money demanded by the ‘Father.’ One of my Copt neighbours was forced to sell me his whole provision of cooking butter to pay his quota. This a little damps the exultation caused by seeing him so honoured by the Effendina. One man who had heard that he had called the American missionaries ‘beggars,’ grumbled to me, ‘Ah yes, beggars, beggars, they didn’t beg of me for money.’ I really do think that there must be something in this dread of the Protestant movement. Evidently the Pasha is backing up the Patriarch who keeps his church well apart from all other Christians, and well under the thumb of the Turks. It was pretty to hear the priests talk so politely of Islam, and curse the Protestants so bitterly. We were very nearly having a row about a woman, who formerly turned Moslimeh to get rid of an old blind Copt husband who had been forced upon her, and was permitted to recant, I suppose in order to get rid of the Muslim husband in his turn. However he said, ‘I don’t care, she is the mother of my two children, and whether she is Muslim or Christian she is my wife, and I won’t divorce her, but I’ll send her to church as much as she likes.’ Thereupon the priests of course dropped the wrangle, much to the relief of Sheykh Yussuf, in whose house she had taken up her quarters after leaving the church, and who was afraid of being drawn into a dispute.

My new little Darfour boy is very funny and very intelligent. I hope he will turn out well, he seems well disposed, though rather lazy. Mabrook quarrelled with a boy belonging to the quarter close to us about a bird, and both boys ran away. The Arab boy is missing still I suppose, but Mabrook was brought back by force, swelling with passion, and with his clothes most scripturally ‘rent.’ He had regularly ‘run amuck.’ Sheykh Yussuf lectured him on his insolence to the people of the quarter, and I wound up by saying, ‘Oh my son! whither dost thou wish to go? I cannot let thee wander about like a beggar, with torn clothes and no money, that the police may take thee and put thee in the army; but say where thou desirest to go, and we will talk about it with discretion.’ It was at once borne in upon him that he did not want to go anywhere, and he said, ‘I repent; I am but an ox, bring the courbash, beat me, and let me go to finish cooking the Sitt’s dinner.’ I remitted the beating, with a threat that if he bullied the neighbours again he would get it at the police, and not from Omar’s very inefficient arm. In half an hour he was as merry as ever. It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about nothing at all. As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic; and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; that was all.

I wish you could have heard (and understood) my soirées, au clair de la lune, with Sheykh Yussuf and Sheykh Abdurrachman. How Abdurrachman and I wrangled, and how Yussuf laughed, and egged us on. Abdurrachman was wroth at my want of faith in physic generally, as well as in particular, and said I talked like an infidel, for had not God said, ‘I have made a medicine for every disease?’ I said, ‘Yes, but He does not say that He has told the doctors which it is; and meanwhile I say, hekmet Allah, (God will cure) which can’t be called an infidel sentiment.’ Then we got into alchemy, astrology, magic and the rest; and Yussuf vexed his friend by telling gravely stories palpably absurd. Abdurrachman intimated that he was laughing at El-Ilm el-Muslimeen (the science of the Muslims), but Yussuf said, ‘What is the Ilm el-Muslimeen? God has revealed religion through His prophets, and we can learn nothing new on that point; but all other learning He has left to the intelligence of men, and the Prophet Mohammed said, “All learning is from God, even the learning of idolaters.” Why then should we Muslims shut out the light, and want to remain ever like children? The learning of the Franks is as lawful as any other.’ Abdurrachman was too sensible a man to be able to dispute this, but it vexed him.

I am tired of telling all the plackereien of our poor people, how three hundred and ten men were dragged off on Easter Monday with their bread and tools, how in four days they were all sent back from Keneh, because there were no orders about them, and made to pay their boat hire. Then in five days they were sent for again. Meanwhile the harvest was cut green, and the wheat is lying out unthreshed to be devoured by birds and rats, and the men’s bread was wasted and spoiled with the hauling in and out of boats. I am obliged to send camels twenty miles for charcoal, because the Abab’deh won’t bring it to market any more, the tax is too heavy. Butter too we have to buy secretly, none comes into the market. When I remember the lovely smiling landscape which I first beheld from my windows, swarming with beasts and men, and look at the dreary waste now, I feel the ‘foot of the Turk’ heavy indeed. Where there were fifty donkeys there is but one; camels, horses, all are gone; not only the horned cattle, even the dogs are more than decimated, and the hawks and vultures seem to me fewer; mankind has no food to spare for hangers-on. The donkeys are sold, the camels confiscated, and the dogs dead (the one sole advantage). Meat is cheap, as everyone must sell to pay taxes and no one has money to buy. I am implored to take sheep and poultry for what I will give.

May 23, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Luxor, May 23, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

I have only time for a few words by Giafar Pasha, who goes early to-morrow morning. My boat arrived all right and brought your tin box. The books and toys are very welcome. The latter threw little Darfour into ecstasies, and he got into disgrace for ‘playing with the Sitt’ instead of minding some business on hand. I fear I shall spoil him, he is so extremely engaging and such a baby. He is still changing his teeth, so cannot be more than eight; at first I did not like him, and feared he was sullen, but it was the usual khoss (fear), the word that is always in one’s ears, and now that is gone, he is always coming hopping in to play with me. He is extremely intelligent and has a pretty baby nigger face. The Darfour people are, as you know, an independent and brave people, and by no means ‘savages.’ I can’t help thinking how pleased Rainie would be with the child. He asked me to give him the picture of the English Sultaneh out of the Illustrated London News, and has pasted it inside the lid of his box.

I am better as usual, since the hot weather has begun, the last six days. I shall leave this in a week, I think, and Mustapha and Yussuf will go with me to Cairo. Yussuf was quite enchanted with your note to him; his eyes glistened, and he took an envelope to keep it carefully. Omar said such a letter is like a hegab (amulet) and Yussuf said, ‘Truly it is, and I could never have one with more baraka (blessing) or more like the virtue which went out of Jesus, if ever I wore one at all; I will never part with it.’

We had a very pretty festival for the Sheykh, whose tomb you have a photograph of, and I spent a very pleasant evening with Sheykh Abd el-Mootooal, who used to scowl at me, but now we are ‘like brothers.’ I found him very clever, and better informed than any Arab I have met, who is quite apart from all Franks. I was astonished to find that he abondait dans man sens in my dispute with Sheykh Abdurrachman, and said that it was the duty of Muslims to learn what they could from us, and not to stick to the old routine.

On Sunday the Patriarch snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a Walee (saint) picked out tit-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb. The Patriarch has made a blunder with his progress. He has come ostentatiously as the protegé and pronem of the Pasha, and he has ‘eaten’ and beaten the fellaheen. The Copts of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honour of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, butter, etc. If I were of a proselytising mind I could make converts of several whose pockets and backs are smarting, and the American missionaries will do it. Of course the Muslims sympathize with the converts to a religion which has no ‘idols,’ and no monks, and whose priests marry like other folk, so they are the less afraid. I hear there are now fifty Protestants at Koos, and the Patriarch was furious because he could not beat them. Omar cooked a grand dinner for him last night for our neighbour Mikaeel, and the eating was not over till two in the morning. Our Government should manage to put the screw on him about our Abyssinian prisoners. I dare not say who told me all he said, but he was a truthful man and a Christian. The Patriarch answered me sharply when I asked about the state of religion in Abyssinia that, ‘they were lovers of the faith, and his obedient children.’ Whenever there is mischief among the Copts, the priests are at the bottom of it. If the Patriarch chose those people would be let go; and so it would be but he hates all Europeans bitterly.

I should like to have the Revue des Deux Mondes of all things, but I don’t know how it is to come here, or what the postage would cost. They send nothing but letters above Cairo by post, as all goes on men’s backs. ‘Inshallah! I am the bearer of good news,’ cries the postman, as he flings the letter over the wall. I am so glad of the chance of getting news to you quick by Giafar Pasha, who came here like a gentleman, alone, without a retinue; he is on his way from two years in the Soudan, where he was absolute Pasha. He is very much liked and respected, and seems a very sensible and agreeable man, quite unlike any Turkish big-wig I have seen. Great potentate as he is, he made Yussuf Mustapha and Abdallah sit down, and was extremely civil and simple in his manners.

June 30, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Benisouef, June 30, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

I write on the chance that this may go safe by post so that you may not think me lost. I left Luxor on May 31, got to Siout (half-way) in a week, and have ever since been battling with an unceasing furious north and north-east wind. I feel like the much travelled Odysseus, and have seen ‘villages and men,’ unlike him, however ‘my companions’ have neither grumbled nor deserted, though it is a bad business for them, having received their money at the rate of about twenty days’ pay, for which they must take me to Cairo. They have eaten all, and are now obliged to stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humoured as if all were well. My fleet consisted of my dahabieh, flag ship; tender, a kyasseh (cargo boat) for my horse and sais, wherein were packed two extremely poor shrivelled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in garrison there; lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of butter, onions and lentils for all the lads of ‘my family’ studying at Gama’l Azhar, besides in my box queer little stores of long hoarded money for those megowareen (students of Gama’l Azhar). Don’t you wish you could provide for Maurice with a sack of bread, a basket of onions and one pound sixteen shillings?

The handsome brown Sheykh el-Arab, Hassan, wanted me to take him, but I knew him to be a ‘fast’ man, and asked Yussuf how I could avoid it without breaking the laws of hospitality, so my ‘father,’ the old Shereef, told Hassan that he did not choose his daughter to travel with a wine-bibber and a frequenter of loose company. Under my convoy sailed two or three little boats with family parties. One of these was very pretty, whose steersman was a charming little fat girl of five years old. All these hoped to escape being caught and worried by the way, by belonging to me, and they dropped off at their several villages. I am tolerably well, better than when I started, in spite of the wind.

Poor Reis Mohammed had a very bad attack of ophthalmia, and sat all of a heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting ‘I am a Muslim,’ equivalent to ‘God’s will be done.’ At one place I was known, and had a lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all with meat and fateereh. The part of the river in which we were kept by the high wind is made cheerful by the custom of the Hareem being just as free to mix with men as Europeans, and I quite enjoyed the pretty girls’ faces, and the gossip with the women who came to fill their water-jars and peep in at the cabin windows, which, by the way, they always ask leave to do. The Sheykh el-Hawara gave me two sheep which are in the cargo-boat with four others—all presents—which Omar intends you to eat at Cairo. The Sheykh is very anxious to give you an entertainment at his palace, if you come up the river, with horse-riding, feasting and dancing girls. In fact I am charged with many messages to el-Kebir (the great master).

July 8, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Cairo, July 8, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

I arrived to-day, after thirty-eight days’ voyage, one month of ceaseless furious wind. My poor men had a hard pull down against it. However I am feeling better than when I left Luxor.

Omar has just brought a whole cargo of your letters, the last of the 26 June. Let me know your plans. If you can go up the river I might send the boat beforehand to Minieh, so far there is a railway now, which would break the neck of the tedious part of the voyage for you if you are pressed for time. I must send this off at once to catch early post to-morrow. Excuse haste, I write in all the bustle of arrival.

July 28, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Boulak, July 28, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

I know I can write nothing more sure to please you than that I am a good deal better. It has been intensely hot, and the wind very worrying, but my cough has greatly abated and I do not feel so weak as I did. I am anchored here in the river at my old quarters, and have not yet been ashore owing to the hot wind and the dust, which of course are far less troublesome here on the river. I have seen but very few people and have but one neighbour, in a boat anchored near mine, a very bewitching Circassian, the former slave of a rich Pasha, now married to a respectable dragoman, and staying in his boat for a week or two. She is young and pretty, and very amiable, and we visit each other often and get on very well indeed. She is a very religious little lady, and was much relieved when I assured her it was not part of my daily devotions to curse the Prophet, and revile the noble Koran.

I am extremely glad that the English have given a hearty welcome to the Ameer el-Moornemeen (Commander of the Faithful); it will have an excellent effect in all Mussulman countries. A queer little Indian from Delhi who had been converted to Islam, and spent four years at Mecca acting as dragoman to his own countrymen, is now settled at Karnac. I sent for him, and he carne shaking in his shoes. I asked why he was afraid? ‘Oh, perhaps I was angry about something, and he was my rayah, and I might have him beaten.’ I cried out at him, ‘Ask pardon of God, O man. How could I beat thee any more than thou couldst beat me? Have we not laws? and art thou not my brother, and the rayah of our Queen, as I am and no more?’ ‘Mashallah!’ exclaimed the six or eight fellaheen who were waiting for physic, in prodigious admiration and wonder; ‘and did we not tell thee that the face of the Sitt brings good fortune and not calamity and stick?’ I found the little Indian had been a hospital servant in Calcutta, and was practising a little physic on his own account. So I gave him a few drugs especially for bad eyes, which he knew a good deal about, and we became very good friends; he was miserable when I left and would have liked me to have taken him as a volunteer servant.

I have come to a curious honour. Ich bin beim lebendigem Leibe besungen. Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels from the desert above Edfou. I asked at last what brought them, and they told me that a Shaer (bard or poet) had gone about singing my praises, as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (nooreen)—my name. Rather a highflown way of mentioning the ‘exhibition’ of a black dose. But we don’t feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is romantic in his talk even about an old woman.

It is no use to talk of the state of things here; all classes are suffering terribly under the fearful taxation, the total ruin of the fellaheen, and the destruction of trade brought about by this much extolled Pasha. My grocer is half ruined by the ‘improvements’ made a l’instar de Paris—long military straight roads cut through the heart of Cairo. The owners are expropriated, and there is an end of it. Only those who have half a house left are to be pitied, because they are forced to build a new front to the street on a Frankish model which renders it uninhabitable to them and unsaleable.

The river men are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they should be forcibly detained by the Sultaneh Franzaweeh, I assured them that they will all come home safe and happy, with a good backsheesh. Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians to stare at like an anteeka, a word which here means what our people call a ‘curiosity.’

I go on very well with my two boys. Mabrook washes very well and acts as marmiton. Darfour is housemaid and waiter in his very tiny way. He is only troublesome as being given to dirty his clothes in an incredibly short time. His account of the school system of Darfour is curious. How when the little boy has achieved excellence he is carried home in triumph to his father’s house, who makes a festival for the master and boys. I suppose you will be surprised to hear that the Darfour ‘niggers’ can nearly all read and write. Poor little Darfour apologised to me for his ignorance, he was stolen he said, when he had only just begun to go to school. I wish an English or French servant could hear the instructions given by an Alim here to serving men. How he would resent them! ‘When thou hast tired out thy back do not put thy hand behind it (do not shirk the burden). Remember that thou art not only to obey, but to please thy master, whose bread thou eatest;’ and much more of the like. In short, a standard of religious obedience and fidelity fit for the highest Catholic idea of the ‘religious life.’ Upon the few who seek instruction it does have an effect (I am sure that Omar looks on his service as a religious duty), but of course they are few; and those who don’t seek it themselves get none. It is curious how all children here are left utterly without any religious instruction. I don’t know whether it is in consequence of this that they grow up so very devout.

July 29, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, July 29, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

Your letter has arrived to my great relief—only I fear you are not at all well. About Maurice. If he wishes to see the Nile let him come, but if he is only to be sent because of me, let it alone. I know I am oppressive company now, and am apt, like Mr. Wodehouse in ‘Emma,’ to say, ‘Let us all have some gruel.’

We know nothing here of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made in Paris shows that. With 3,000 in his hareem, several slave regiments, and lots of gangs on all his sugar plantations, his impudence is wonderful. He is himself the greatest living slave trader as well as owner. My lads are afraid to go out alone for fear of being snapped up by cawasses and taken to the army or the sugar works. You will be sorry to hear that your stalwart friend Hassan has had fifty blows on each foot-sole, and had to pay six pounds. He was taking two donkeys to Shepheard’s hotel before sunrise for a French lady and gentleman to go to the Pyramids, when a cawass met him, seized the donkeys, and on Hassan’s refusal to give them up, spat on the side-saddle and reviled Hassan’s own Hareem and began to beat him with his courbash. Hassan got impatient, took the cawass up in his arms and threw him on the ground, and went on. Presently four cawasses came after him, seized him and took him to the Zaptieh (police office), where they all swore he had beaten them, torn their clothes, and robbed one of an imaginary gold watch—all valued at twenty-four pounds. After the beating he was carried to prison in chains, and there sentenced to be a soldier. A friend however interfered and settled the matter for six pounds. Hassan sends you his best salaam.

Last night was very pretty—all the boats starting for the moolid of Seyd el-Bedawee at Tanta. Every boat had a sort of pyramid of lanterns, and the derweeshes chanted, and the worldly folks had profane music and singing, and I sat and looked and listened, and thought how many thousand years ago just the same thing was going on in honour of Bubastis.

August 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, August 7, 1867.

My dearest Alick,

Two sailors of mine of last year went to Paris in the dahabieh for the Empress, and are just come back. When I see them I expect I shall have some fun out of their account of their journey. Poor Adam’s father died of grief at his son’s going, nothing would persuade him that Adam would come back safe, and having a heart complaint, he died. And now the lad is back, well and with fine clothes, but is much cut up, I hear, by his father’s death. Please send me a tremendous whistle; mine is not loud enough to wake Omar at the other end of the cabin; a boatswain’s whistle or something in the line of the ‘last trump’ is needed to wake sleeping Arabs.

My pretty neighbour has gone back into the town. She was a nice little woman, and amused me a good deal. I see that a good respectable Turkish hareem is an excellent school of useful accomplishments—needlework, cookery, etc. But I observed that she did not care a bit for the Pasha, by whom she had a child, but was extremely fond of ‘her lady,’ as she politely called her, also that like every Circassian I ever knew, she regarded being sold as quite a desirable fate, and did not seem sorry for her parents, as the negroes always are.

The heat has been prodigious, but I am a good deal better. Yesterday the Nile had risen above ten cubits, and the cutting of the Kalig took place. The river is pretty full now, but they say it will go down fast this year. I don’t know why. It looks very beautiful, blood-red and tossed into waves by the north wind fighting the rapid stream.

Good-bye dear Alick, I hope to hear a better account of your health soon.

August 8, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Boulak, August 8, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

Two of my sailors were in Paris and have just come home. I hear they are dreadfully shocked by the dancing, and by the French women of the lower class generally. They sit in the coffee-shops like shaers (poets), and tell of the wonders of Paris to admiring crowds. They are enthusiastic about the courtesy of the French police, who actually did not beat them when they got into a quarrel, but scolded the Frankish man instead, and accompanied them back to the boat quite politely. The novelty and triumph of not being beaten was quite intoxicating. There is such a curious sight of a crowd of men carrying huge blocks of stone up out of a boat. One sees exactly how the stones were carried in ancient times; they sway their bodies all together like one great lithe animal with many legs, and hum a low chant to keep time. It is quite unlike any carrying heavy weights in Europe.

It is getting dusk and too windy for candles, so I must say goodnight and eat the dinner which Darfour has pressed upon me two or three times, he is a pleasant little creature, so lively and so gentle. It is washing day. I wish you could see Mabrook squatting out there, lathering away at the clothes with his superb black arms. He is a capital washer and a fair cook, but an utter savage.

[The foregoing letter reached England the day after the death of my grandmother, Mrs. Austin, which was a great shock to my mother and made her ill and unhappy; so it was settled that my brother Maurice should go out and spend the winter with her on the Nile.]

September 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, September 7, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

Many thanks for your letter and for all the trouble you have taken. I wish you were better.

There is such a group all stitching away at the big new sail; Omar, the Reis, two or three volunteers, some old sailors of mine, and little Darfour. If I die I think you must have that tiny nigger over; he is such a merry little soul, I am sure you would love him, he is quite a civilized being and has a charming temper, and he seems very small to be left alone in the world.

I hope Maurice is not of the faction of the ennuyés of this generation. I am more and more of Omar’s opinion, who said, with a pleased sigh, as we sat on the deck under some lovely palm-trees in the bright moon-light, moored far from all human dwellings, ‘how sweet are the quiet places of the world.’

I wonder when Europe will drop the absurd delusion about Christians being persecuted by Muslims. It is absolutely the other way,—here at all events. The Christians know that they will always get backed by some Consul or other, and it is the Muslims who go to the wall invariably. The brute of a Patriarch is resolved to continue his persecution of the converts, and I was urged the other day by a Sheykh to go to the Sheykh ul-Islam himself and ask him to demand equal rights for all religions, which is the law, on behalf of these Coptic Protestants. Everywhere the Ulema have done what they could to protect them, even at Siout, where the American missionaries had caused them (the Ulemas) a good deal of annoyance on a former occasion. No one in Europe can conceive how much the Copts have the upper hand in the villages. They are backed by the Government, and they know that the Europeans will always side with them.

September 13.—Omar is crazy with delight at the idea of Maurice’s arrival, and Reis Mohammed is planning what men to take who can make fantasia, and not ask too much wages. Let me know what boat Maurice comes by that I may send Omar to Alexandria to meet him. Omar begs me to give you and Sitti Rainie his best salaam, and his assurance that he will take great care of the young master and ‘keep him very tight.’ I think Maurice will be diverted with small Darfour. Mabrook now really cooks very fairly under Omar’s orders, but he is beyond belief uncouth, and utters the wildest howls now that his voice is grown big and strong like himself. Moreover he ‘won’t be spoken to,’ as our servants say; but he is honest, clean, and careful. I should not have thought any human creature could remain so completely a savage in a civilized community. I rather respect his savage hauteur, especially as it is combined with truth and honesty.

October 17, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, Boat Marie Louise, October 17, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

You must not be wroth with me because I have not written for a long time—I have been ill, but am much better. Omar will go down to Alexandria to meet Maurice on Monday.

My boat is being painted, but is nearly finished; as soon as it is done I shall move back into her. I got out into a little cangia but it swarmed with bugs and wasps, and was too dirty, so I moved yesterday into a good boat belonging to a dragoman, and hope to be back in my own by Sunday. But oh Lord! I got hold of the Barber himself turned painter; and as the little cangia was moored alongside the Urania in order to hold all the mattresses, carpets, etc. I was his victim. First, it was a request for ‘three pounds to buy paint.’ ‘None but the best of paint is fitting for a noble person like thee, and that thou knowest is costly, and I am thy servant and would do thee honour.’ ‘Very well,’ say I, ‘take the money, and see, oh man, that the paint is of the best, or thy backsheesh will be bad also.’ Well, he begins and then rushes in to say: ‘Come oh Bey, oh Pasha! and behold the brilliancy of the white paint, like milk, like glass, like the full moon.’ I go and say, ‘Mashallah! but now be so good as to work fast, for my son will be here in a few days, and nothing is ready.’ Fatal remark. ‘Mashallah! Bismillah! may the Lord spare him, may God prolong thy days, let me advise thee how to keep the eye from him, for doubtless thy son is beautiful as a memlook of 1,000 purses. Remember to spit in his face when he comes on board, and revile him aloud that all the people may hear thee, and compel him to wear torn and dirty clothes when he goes out:—and how many children hast thou, and our master, thy master, and is he well?’ etc. etc. ‘Shukr Allah! all is well with us,’ say I; ‘but, by the Prophet, paint, oh Ma-alim (exactly the German Meister) and do not break my head any more.’ But I was forced to take refuge at a distance from Hajj’ Alee’s tongue. Read the story of the Barber, and you will know exactly what Ma-alim Hajj’ Alee is. Also just as I got out of my boat and he had begun, the painter whom I had last year and with whom I was dissatisfied, went to the Sheykh of the painters and persuaded him to put my man in prison for working too cheap—that was at daybreak. So I sent up my Reis to the Sheykh to inform him that if my man did not return by next day at daybreak, I would send for an European painter and force the Sheykh to pay the bill. Of course my man came.

My steersman Hassan, and a good man, Hoseyn, who can wash and is generally nice and pleasant, arrived from el-Bastowee a few days ago, and are waiting here till I want them. Poor little ugly black Hassan has had his house burnt down in his village, and lost all the clothes which he had bought with his wages; they were very good clothes, some of them, and a heavy loss. He is my Reis’s brother, and a good man, clean and careful and quiet, better than my Reis even—they are a respectable family. Big stout Hazazin owes me 200 piastres which he is to work out, so I have still five men and a boy to get. I hope a nice boy, called Hederbee (the lizard), will come. They don’t take pay till the day before we sail, except the Reis and Abdul Sadig, who are permanent. But Hassan and Hoseyn are working away as merrily as if they were paid. People growl at the backsheesh, but they should also remember what a quantity of service one gets for nothing here, and for which, oddly enough, no one dreams of asking backsheesh. Once a week we shift the anchors, for fear of their silting over, and six or eight men work for an hour; then the mast is lowered—twelve or fourteen men work at this—and nobody gets a farthing.

The other day Omar met in the market an ‘agreeable merchant,’ an Abyssinian fresh from his own country, which he had left because of the tyranny of Kassa, alias Todoros, the Sultan. The merchant had brought his wife and concubines to live here. His account is that the mass of the people are delighted to hear that the English are coming to conquer them, as they hope, and that everyone hates the King except two or three hundred scamps who form his bodyguard. He had seen the English prisoners, who, he says, are not ill-treated, but certainly in danger, as the King is with difficulty restrained from killing them by the said scamps, who fear the revenge of the English; also that there is one woman imprisoned with the native female prisoners. Hassan the donkeyboy, when he was a marmiton in Cairo, knew the Sultan Todoros, he was the only man who could be found to interpret between the then King of Abyssinia and Mohammed Ali Pasha, whom Todoros had come to visit. The merchant also expressed a great contempt for the Patriarch, and for their Matraam or Metropolitan, whom the English papers call the Abuna. Abuna is Arabic for ‘our father.’ The man is a Cairene Copt and was a hanger-on of two English missionaries (they were really Germans) here, and he is more than commonly a rascal and a hypocrite. I know a respectable Jew whom he had robbed of all his merchandise, only Ras Alee forced the Matraam to disgorge. Pray what was all that nonsense about the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem writing to Todoros? what could he have to do with it? The Coptic Patriarch, whose place is Cairo, could do it if he were forced.

At last my boat is finished, so to-morrow Omar will clean the windows, and on Saturday move in the cushions, etc. and me, and on Sunday go to Alexandria. I hear the dreadful voice of Hajj’ Alee, the painter, outside, and will retire before he gets to the cabin door, for fear he should want to bore me again. I do hope Maurice will enjoy his journey; everyone is anxious to please him. The Sheykh of the Hawara sent his brother to remind me to stop at his ‘palace’ near Girgeh, that he might make a fantasia for my son. So Maurice will see real Arab riding, and jereed, and sheep roasted whole and all the rest of it. The Sheykh is the last of the great Arab chieftains of Egypt, and has thousands of fellaheen and a large income. He did it for Lord Spencer and for the Duke of Rutland and I shall get as good a fantasia, I have no doubt. Perhaps at Keneh Maurice had better not see the dancing, for Zeyneb and Latefeeh are terribly fascinating, they are such pleasant jolly girls as well as pretty and graceful, but old Oum ez-Zeyn (mother of beauty), so-called on account of his hideousness, will want us to eat his good dinner.

October 21, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Urania, Boulak, October 21, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

So many thanks for the boxes and their contents. My slaves are enchanted with all that the ‘great master’ has sent. Darfour hugged the horsecloth in ecstasy that he should never again be cold at night. The waistcoats of printed stuff, and the red flannel shirts are gone to be made up, so my boys will be like Pashas this winter, as they told the Reis. He is awfully perturbed about the evil eye. ‘Thy boat, Mashallah, is such as to cause envy from all beholders; and now when they see a son with thee, Bismillah! Mashallah! like a flower, verily. I fear, I fear greatly from the eye of the people.’ We have bought a tambourine and a tarabouka, and are on the look-out for a man who can sing well, so as to have fantasia on board.

October 22.—I hear to-day that the Pasha sent a telegram hochst eigenhändig to Koos, in consequence whereof one Stefanos, an old Copt of high character, many years in Government employ, was put in chains and hurried off within twenty minutes to Fazoghlou with two of his friends, for no other crime than having turned Presbyterian. This is quite a new idea in Egypt, and we all wonder why the Pasha is so anxious to ‘brush the coat’ of the Copt Patriarch. We also hear that the people up in the Saaed are running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay the new taxes and to do the work exacted. Even here the beating is fearful. My Reis has had to send all his month’s wages to save his aunt and his sister-in-law, both widows, from the courbash. He did not think so much of the blows, but of the ‘shame’; ‘those are women, lone women, from whence can they get the money?’

November 3, 1867: Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.

Boulak, November 3, 1867.

Dearest Janet,

Maurice arrived on Friday week, and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour’s amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the other day up at Bahr Yussuf, and we were nearly all swept away by the furious rush of water. My little boat was upset while three men in her were securing the anchor, and two of them were nearly drowned, though they swim like fish; all the dahabiehs were rattled and pounded awfully; and in the middle of the fracas, at noonday, a steamer ran into us quite deliberately. I was rather frightened when the steamer bumped us, and carried away the iron supports of the awning; and they cursed our fathers into the bargain, which I thought needless. The English have fallen into such contempt here that one no longer gets decent civility from anything in the Miri (Government).

Olagnier has lent us a lovely little skiff, and I have had her repaired and painted, so Maurice is set up for shooting and boating. Darfour calls him the ‘son of a crocodile’ because he loves the water, and generally delights in him hugely, and all my men are enchanted with him.

December 20, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, December 20, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

We arrived here all safe three days ago. I think of starting for Nubia directly after Christmas Day, which we must keep here. We have lovely weather. Maurice is going with a friend of my friends, a Bedawee, to shoot, I hope among the Abab’deh he will get some gazelle shooting. I shall stop at Syaleh to visit the Sheykh’s mother, and with them Maurice could go for some days into the desert. As to crocodiles, Inshallah, we will eat their hearts, and not they ours. You may rely on it that Maurice is ‘on the head and in the eye’ of all my crew, and will not be allowed to bathe in ‘unclean places.’ Reis Mohammed stopped him at Gebel Abu’l Foda. You would be delighted to see how different he looks; all his clothes are too tight now. He says he is thoroughly happy, and that he was never more amused than when with me, which I think very flattering.

Half of the old house at Luxor fell down into the temple beneath six days before I arrived; so there is an end of the Maison de France, I suppose. It might be made very nice again at a small expense, but I suppose the Consul will not do it, and certainly I shall not unless I want it again. Nothing now remains solid but the three small front rooms and the big hall with two rooms off it. All the part I lived in is gone, and the steps, so one cannot get in. Luckily Yussuf had told Mohammed to move my little furniture to the part which is solid, having a misgiving of the rest. He has the most exquisite baby, an exact minature of himself. He is in a manner my godson, being named Noor ed-Deen Hishan Abu-l-Hajjaj, to be called Noor like me.

January, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

On Board the Urania, January, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

Your letter of the 10 December most luckily came on to Edfoo by the American Consul-General, who overtook us there in his steamer and gave me a lunch. Maurice was as usual up to his knees in a distant swamp trying to shoot wild geese. Now we are up close to Assouan, and there are no more marshes; but en revanche there are quails and kata, the beautiful little sand grouse. I eat all that Maurice shoots, which I find very good for me; and as for Maurice he has got back his old round boyish face; he eats like an ogre, walks all day, sleeps like a top, bathes in the morning and has laid on flesh so that his clothes won’t button. At Esneh we fell in with handsome Hassan, who is now Sheykh of the Abab’deh, as his elder brother died. He gave us a letter to his brother at Syaleh, up in Nubia; ordering him to get up a gazelle hunt for Maurice, and I am to visit his wife. I think it will be pleasant, as the Bedaween women don’t veil or shut up, and to judge by the men ought to be very handsome. Both Hassan and Abu Goord, who was with him, preached the same sermon as my learned friend Abdurrachman had done at Luxor. ‘Why, in God’s name, I left my son without a wife?’ They are sincerely shocked at such indifference to a son’s happiness.

Assouan, 10 Ramadan.

I have no almanach, but you will be able to know the date by your own red pocketbook, which determined the beginning of Ramadan at Luxor this year. They received a telegram fixing it for Thursday, but Sheykh Yussuf said that he was sure the astronomers in London knew best, and made it Friday. To-morrow we shall make our bargain, and next day go up the Cataract—Inshallah, in safety. The water is very good, as Jesus the black pilot tells me. He goes to the second Cataract and back, as I intend to stay nearly two months in Nubia. The weather here is perfect now, we have been lucky in having a lovely mild winter hitherto. We are very comfortable with a capital crew, who are all devoted to Maurice. The Sheykh of the Abab’deh has promised to join us if he can, when he has convoyed some 400 Bashibazouks up to Wady Halfa, who are being sent up because the English are in Abyssinia.

April, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Luxor, April, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

I have been too weak to write, but the heat set in three days ago and took away my cough, and I feel much better. Maurice also flourishes in the broil, and protests against moving yet. He speaks a good deal of Arabic and is friends with everyone. It is Salaam aleykoum ya maris on all sides. A Belgian has died here, and his two slaves, a very nice black boy and an Abyssinian girl, got my little varlet, Darfour, to coax me to take them under my protection, which I have done, as there appeared a strong probability that they would be ‘annexed’ by a rascally Copt who is a Consular agent at Keneh. I believe the Belgian has left money for them, which of course they would never get without someone to look after it, and so I have Ramadan, the boy, with me, and shall take the girl when I go, and carry them both to Cairo, settle their little business, and let them present a sealed-up book which they have to their Consul there, according to their master’s desire, and then marry the girl to some decent man. I have left her in Mustapha’s hareem till I go.

I enjoyed Nubia immensely, and long to go and live with the descendants of a great Ras (head, chief,) who entertained me at Ibreem, and who said, like Ravenswood, ‘Thou art come to a fallen house, and there is none to serve thee left save me.’ It was a paradise of a place, and the Nubian had the grand manners of a very old, proud nobleman. I had a letter to him from Sheykh Yussuf.

Since I wrote the above it has turned quite chilly again, so we agreed to stay till the heat really begins. Maurice is so charmed with Luxor that he does not want to go, and we mean to let the boat and live here next winter. I think another week will see us start down stream. Janet talks of coming up the Nile with me next year, which would be pleasant. I am a little better than I have been the last two months. I was best in Nubia but I got a cold at Esneh, second hand from Maurice, which made me very seedy. I cannot go about at all for want of breath. Could you send me a chair such as people are carried in by two men? A common chair is awkward for the men when the banks are steep, and I am nervous, so I never go out. I wish you could see your son bare-legged and footed, in a shirt and a pair of white Arab drawers, rushing about with the fellaheen. He is everybody’s ‘brother’ or ‘son.’

May, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Minieh, May, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

We are just arriving at Minieh whence the railway will take letters quickly. We dined at Keneh and at Siout with some friends, and had fantasia at Keneh. Omar desires his dutiful salaams to you and hopes you will be satisfied with the care he has taken of ‘the child.’ How you would have been amused to hear the girl who came to dance for us at Esneh lecture Maurice about evil ways, but she was an old friend of mine, and gave good and sound advice.

Everyone is delighted about Abyssinia. ‘Thank God our Pasha will fear the English more than before, and the Sultan also,’ and when I lamented the expense, they all exclaimed, ‘Never mind the expense, it is worth more than ten millions to you; your faces are whitened and your power enlarged before all the world; but why don’t you take us on your way back.’

I saw a very interesting man at Keneh, one Faam, a Copt, who has turned Presbyterian, and has induced a hundred others at Koos to do likewise: an American missionary is their minister. Faam was sent off to the Soudan by the Patriarch, but brought back. He is a splendid old fellow, and I felt I looked on the face of a Christian martyr, a curious sight in the nineteenth century: the calm, fearless, rapt expression was like what you see in noble old Italian pictures, and he had the perfect absence of ‘doing pious’ which shows the undoubting faith. He and the Mufti, also a noble fellow, sparred about religion in a jocose and friendly tone which would be quite unintelligible in Exeter Hall. When he was gone the Mufti said, ‘Ah! we thank them, for though they know not the truth of Islam, they are good men, and walk straight, and would die for their religion: their example is excellent; praise be to God for them.’

June 14, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, June 14, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

The climate has been odious for Egypt—to shiver in cold winds of June on the Nile seems hard. Maurice inherits my faculty for getting on with ‘d------d niggers’; all the crew kissed him on both cheeks and swore to come back again in the winter; and up the country he was hand and glove with all the fellaheen, eating a good deal of what he called ‘muck’ with great enjoyment, walking arm in arm with a crazy derweesh, fetching home a bride at night and swearing lustily by the Prophet. The good manners of the Arab canaille, have rubbed off the very disagreeable varnish which he got at Brussels.

Dr. Patterson wants me to go to Beyrout or one of the Greek isles for a change. I am very feeble and short of breath—but I will try the experiment. Would you be shocked if a nigger taught Maurice? One Hajjee Daboos I know to be a capital Arabic scholar and he speaks French like a Parisian, and Italian also, only he is a real nigger and so is the best music-master in Cairo. Que faire? it’s not catching, as Lady Morley said, and I won’t present you with a young mulatto any more than with a young brave Belge. I may however find someone at Beyrout. Cairo is in such a state of beggary that all educated young men have fled. Maurice has no sort of idea why a nigger should not be as good as anyone else, but thinks perhaps you might not approve.

You would have stared to see old Achmet Agha Abd el-Sadig, a very good friend of ours at Assouan, coaxing and patting the weled (boy) when he dined here the other day, and laughing immoderately at Maurice’s nonsense. He is one of the M.P.’s for Assouan, and a wealthy and much respected man in the Saeed. The Abyssinian affair is an awful disappointment to the Pasha; he had laid his calculations for something altogether different, and is furious. The Coptic clergy are ready to murder us. The Arabs are all in raptures. ‘God bless the English general, he has frightened our Pasha.’

Giafar Pasha backsheeshed me an abbayeh of crimson silk and gold, also a basket of coffee. I was obliged to accept them as he sent his son with them, and to refuse would have been an insult, and as he is the one Turk I do think highly of I did not wish to affront him. It was at Luxor on his way to Khartoum. He also invited Maurice to Khartoum, and proposed to send a party to fetch him from Korosko, on the Nile. Giafar is Viceroy of the Soudan, and a very quiet man, who does not ‘eat the people.’

My best love to Janet, I’ll write soon to her, but I am lazy and Maurice is worse. Omar nearly cried when Maurice went to Alexandria for a week. ‘I seem to feel how dull we shall be without him when he goes away for good,’ said he, and Darfour expresses his intention of going with Maurice. ‘Thou must give me to the young man backsheesh,’ as he puts it, ‘because I have plenty of sense and shall tell him what to do.’ That is the little rascal’s sauce. Terence’s slaves are true to the life here.

October 22, 1868: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, October 22, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

The unlucky journey to Syria almost cost me my life. The climate is absolute poison to consumptive people. In ten days after I arrived the doctor told me to settle my affairs, for I had probably only a few days to live, and certainly should never recover. However I got better, and was carried on board the steamer, but am too weak for anything. We were nearly shipwrecked coming back owing to the Russian captain having his bride on board and not minding his ship. We bumped and scraped and rolled very unpleasantly. At Beyrout the Sisters of Charity wouldn’t nurse a Protestant, nor the Prussians a non-Lutheran. But Omar and Darfour nursed me better than Europeans ever do. Little Blackie was as sharp about the physic as a born doctor’s boy when Omar was taking his turn of sleep. I did not like the few Syrians I saw at all.

November 6, 1868: Alick

Boulak, November 6, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

I am sure you will rejoice to hear that I am really better. I now feel so much like living on a bit longer that I will ask you to send me a cargo of medicines. I didn’t think it worth while before to ask for anything to be sent to me that could not be forwarded to Hades, but my old body seems very tough and I fancy I have still one or two of my nine lives left.

I hope to sail in a very few days, Maurice is going up to Cairo so I send this by him. Yesterday was little Rainie’s birthday, and I thought very longingly of her. The photo, of Leighton’s sketch of Janet I like very much.

January 25, 1869: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Assouan, January 25, 1869.

Dearest Alick,

We have been here ten days, and I find the air quite the best for me. I cough much less, only I am weak and short of breath. I have got a most excellent young Reis for my boat, and a sailor who sings like a nightingale, indeed he is not a sailor at all, but a professional Cairo singer who came up with me for fun. He draws crowds to hear him, and at Esneh the congregation prayed for me in the mosque that God might reward me for the pleasure I had provided for them. Fancy desiring the prayers of this congregation for the welfare of the lady who gave me her opera-box last Saturday. If prayers could avail to cure I ought to get well rapidly. At Luxor Omar killed the sheep he had vowed, and Mustapha and Mohammed each killed two, as thank-offerings for my life, and all the derweeshes held two great Zikrs in a tent pitched behind the boat, and drummed and chanted and called on the Lord for two whole nights; and every man in my boat fasted Ramadan severely, from Omar and the crew to the little boys. I think Darfour was the most meritorious of all, because he has such a Gargantuan appetite, but he fasted his thirty days bravely and rubbed his little nose in the dust energetically in prayer.

On Christmas day I was at Esneh, it was warm and fine, and I made fantasia and had the girls to dance. Zeyneb and Hillaleah claim to be my own special Ghazawee, so to speak my Ballerine da camera, and they did their best. How I did long to transport the whole scene before your eyes—Ramadan warbling intense lovesongs, and beating on a tiny tambourine, while Zeyneb danced before him and gave the pantomime to his song; and the sailors, and girls, and respectable merchants sat pêle-mêle all round on the deck, and the player on the rabab drew from it a wail like that of Isis for dead Osiris. I never quite know whether it is now or four thousand years ago, or even ten thousand, when I am in the dreamy intoxication of a real Egyptian fantasia; nothing is so antique as the Ghazawee—the real dancing girls. They are still subject to religious ecstasies of a very curious kind, no doubt inherited from the remotest antiquity. Ask any learned pundit to explain to you the Zar—it is really curious.

Now that I am too ill to write I feel sorry that I did not persist and write on the beliefs of Egypt in spite of your fear that the learned would cut me up, for I honestly believe that knowledge will die with me which few others possess. You must recollect that the learned know books, and I know men, and what is still more difficult, women.

The Cataract is very bad this year, owing to want of water in the Nile, and to the shameful conduct of the Maohn here. The cataract men came to me, and prayed me to ‘give them my voice’ before the Mudir, which I will do. Allah ed-deen Bey seems a decent man and will perhaps remove the rascal, whose robberies on travellers are notorious, and his oppression of the poor savages who pull the boats up odious. Two boats have been severely damaged, and my friend the Reis of the Cataract (the one I threatened to shoot last year, and who has believed in me ever since) does not advise me to go up, though he would take me for nothing, he swears, if I wished. So as the air is good here and Maurice is happy with his companions, I will stay here.

I meant to have discharged my men, but I have grown so fond of them (having so good a set), that I can’t bring myself to save £20 by turning them adrift when we are all so happy and comfortable, and the poor fellows are just marrying new wives with their wages. Good-bye dearest Alick, forgive a scrawl, for I am very weak all over, fingers and all. Best love to my darling Rainie. Three boats have little girls of five to eight on board, and I do envy them so. I think Maurice had better go home to you, when we get to Cairo. He ought to be doing something.

June 15, 1869: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Boulak, June 15, 1869.

Dearest Alick,

Do not think of coming here. Indeed it would be almost too painful to me to part from you again; and as it is, I can patiently wait for the end among people who are kind and loving enough to be comfortable, without too much feeling of the pain of parting. The leaving Luxor was rather a distressing scene, as they did not think to see me again.

The kindness of all the people was really touching, from the Kadee who made ready my tomb among his own family, to the poorest fellaheen. Omar sends you his most heartfelt thanks, and begs that the boat may remain registered at the Consulate in your name for his use and benefit. The Prince has appointed him his own dragoman. But he is sad enough, poor fellow, all his prosperity does not console him for the loss of ‘the mother he found in the world.’ Mohammed at Luxor wept bitterly and said, ‘poor I, my poor children, poor all the people,’ and kissed my hand passionately, and the people at Esneh, asked leave to touch me ‘for a blessing,’ and everyone sent delicate bread, and their best butter, and vegetables and lambs. They are kinder than ever now that I can no longer be of any use to them.

If I live till September I will go up to Esneh, where the air is softest and I cough less. I would rather die among my own people in the Saeed than here.

You must forgive this scrawl, dearest. Don’t think please of sending Maurice out again, he must begin to work now or he will never be good for anything.

Can you thank the Prince of Wales for Omar, or shall I write? He was most pleasant and kind, and the Princess too. She is the most perfectly simple-mannered girl I ever saw. She does not even try to be civil like other great people, but asks blunt questions, and looks at one so heartily with her clear, honest eyes, that she must win all hearts. They were more considerate than any people I have seen, and the Prince, instead of being gracious, was, if I may say so, quite respectful in his manner: he is very well bred and pleasant, and has the honest eyes that makes one sure he has a kind heart.