To Mrs. Ross.
Luxor,April3, 1865.
Dearest Janet,
The weather has set in so horrid, as to dust, that I shall be glad to get away as soon as I can. If you have bought a dahabieh for me of course I will await its arrival. If not I will have two small boats from Keneh, whereby I shall avoid sticking in this very low water. Sheykh Hassan goes down in his boat in twenty days and urges me to travel under his escort, as of course the poor devils who are ‘out on their keeping’ after the Gau business have no means of living left but robbery, and Sheykh Hassan’s party is good for seven or eight guns. You will laugh at my listening to such a cowardly proposition (on my part) but my friends here are rather bent upon it, and Hassan is a capital fellow. If therefore the dahabieh isin rerum naturæand can start at once, well and good.
April14.—The dahabieh sounds an excellent bargain to me and good for you also to get your people to Assouan first. Many thanks for the arrangement.
Your version of our massacre is quite curious to us here. I know very intimately the Sheykh-el-Arab who helped to catch the poor people and also a young Turk who stood by while Fadil Pasha had the men laid down by ten at a time and chopped with pioneers’ axes. My Turkish friend (a very good-humoured young fellow) quite admired the affair and expressed a desire to do likewise to all the fellaheen in Egypt. I have seen with my own eyes a second boatload of prisoners. I wish to God the Pasha knew the deep exasperation which his subordinates are causing. I do not like to say all I hear. As to the Ulema, Kadees, Muftis, etc., I know many from towns and villages, and all say ‘We are Muslims, but we should thank God to send Europeans to govern us,’ the feeling is against the Government and the Turks up here—not against Christians. A Coptic friend of mine has lost all his uncle’s family at Gau, all were shot down—Copt and Christian alike. As to Hajjee Sultan, who lies in chains at Keneh and his family up at Esneh, a better man never lived, nor one more liberal to Christians. Copts ate of his bread as freely as Muslims. He lies there because he is distantly related by marriage to Achmet et-Tayib, the real reason is because he is wealthy and some enemy covets his goods.
Ask M. Mounier what he knows. Perhaps I know even more of the feeling as I am almost adopted by the Abu-l-Hajjajeeah, and sit every evening with some party or another of decent men. I assure you I am in despair at all I see—and if the soldiers do come it will be worse than the cattle disease. Are not the cawasses bad enough? Do they not buy in the market at their own prices and beat the sakkas in sole payment for the skins of water? Who denies it here? Cairo is like Paris, things are kept sweet there, but up here—! Of course Effendina hears the ‘smooth prophecies’ of the tyrants whom he sends up river. When I wrote before I knew nothing certain but now I have eye-witnesses’ testimony, and I say that the Pasha deceives or is deceived—I hope the latter. An order from him did stop the slaughter of women and children which Fadil Pasha was about to effect.
To turn to less wretched matters. I will come right down Alexandria with the boat, I shall rejoice to see you again.
Possibly the Abab’deh may come with me and I hope Sheykh Yussuf, ‘my chaplain’ as Arthur Taylor called him. We shall be quite a little fleet.
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
April, 1865.
Dearest Alexander,
Yesterday was the Bairam I rejoice to say and I have lots of physic to make up, for all the stomachs damaged by Ramadan.
I have persuaded Mr. Fowler the engineer who was with Lord Dudley to take my dear little pupil Achmet son of Ibn Mustapha to learn the business at Leeds instead of idling in his father’s house here. I will give the child a letter to you in case he should go to London. He has been reading the gospels with me at his own desire. I refused till I had asked his father’s consent, and Sheykh Yussuf who heard me begged me by all means to make him read it carefully so as to guard him against the heretical inventions he might be beset with among the English ‘of the vulgar sort.’ What a poser for a missionary!
I sent down the poor black lad with Arakel Bey. He took leave of me with his ugly face all blubbered like a sentimental hippopotamus. He said ‘for himself, he wished to stay with me, but then what would his boy, his little master do—there was only a stepmother who would take all the money, and who else would work for the boy?’ Little Achmet was charmed to see Khayr go, of whom he chose to be horribly jealous, and to be wroth at all he did for me. Now the Sheykh-el-Beled of Baidyeh has carried off my watchman, and the Christian Sheykh-el-Hara of our quarter of Luxor has taken the boy Yussuf for the Canal. The former I successfully resisted and got back Mansoor, not indeedincolumesforhehad been handcuffed and bastinadoed to makemepay 200 piastres, but he bore it like a man rather than ask me for the money and was thereupon surrendered. But the Copt will be a tougher business—he will want more money and be more resolved to get it.Veremus. I must I suppose go to the Nazir at the Canal—a Turk—and beg off my donkey boy.
Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, from sketch by G. F. Watts, R.A.
I saw Hassan Sheykh-el-Abab’deh yesterday, who was loud in praise of your good looks and gracious manners. ‘Mashallah, thy master is a sweet man, O Lady!’
Yesterday was Bairam, and lots of Hareem came in their best clothes to wish me a happy year and enjoyed themselves much with sweet cakes, coffee, and pipes. Kursheed’s wife (whom I cured completely) looked very handsome. Kursheed is a Circassian, a fine young fellow much shot and hacked about and with a Crimean medal. He is cawass here and a great friend of mine. He says if I ever want a servant he will go with me anywhere and fight anybody—which I don’t doubt in the least. He was a Turkish memlook and his condescension in wishing to serve a Christian woman is astounding. His fair face and clear blue eyes, and brisk, neat, soldier-like air contrast curiously with the brown fellaheen. He is like an Englishman only fairer and like them too fond of the courbash. What would you say if I appeared in Germany attended by a memlook with pistols, sword, dagger, carbine and courbash, and with a decided and imperious manner the very reverse of the Arab softness—and such a Muslim too—prays five times a day and extra fasts besides Ramadan. ‘I beat my wife’ said Kursheed, ‘oh! I beat her well! she talked so, and I am like the English, I don’t like too many words.’ He was quite surprised that I said I was gladmymaster didn’t dislike talking so much.
I was talking the other day with Yussuf about people trying to make converts and I said that eternal bêtise, ‘Oh they mean well.’ ‘True, oh Lady! perhaps they do mean well, but God says in the Noble Koran that he who injures or torments those Christians whose conduct is not evil, merely on account of religion, shall never smell the fragrance of the Garden (paradise). Now when men begin to want to make others change their faith it is extremely hard for themnotto injure or torment them and therefore I think it better to abstain altogether and to wish rather to see a Christian a good Christian and a Muslim a good Muslim.’
No wonder a most pious old Scotchman told me that the truth which undeniably existed in the Mussulman faith was the work of Satan and the Ulema hismeenesters. My dear saint of a Yussuf ameenesterof Satan! I really think Ihavelearnt some ‘Muslim humility’ in that I endured the harangue, and accepted a two-penny tract quite mildly and politely and didn’t argue at all. As his friend ‘Satan’ would have it, the Fikees were reading the Koran in the hall at Omar’s expense who gave a Khatmeh that day, and Omar came in and politely offered him some sweet prepared for the occasion. I have been really amazed at several instances of English fanaticism this year. Why do people come to a Mussulman country with such bitter hatred ‘in their stomachs’ as I have seen three or four times. I feel quite hurt often at the way the people here thank me for what the poor at home would turn up their noses at. I think hardly a dragoman has been up the river since Rashedee died but has come to thank me as warmly as if I had done himself some great service—and many to give some little present. While the man was ill numbers of the fellaheen brought eggs, pigeons, etc. etc. even a turkey, and food is worth money now, not as it used to be. I am quite weary too of hearing ‘Of all the Frangee I never saw one like thee.’ Was no one ever at all humane before? For remember I give no money—only a little physic and civility. How the British cottagers would ‘thank ye for nothing’—and how I wish my neighbours here could afford to do the same.
After much wrangling Mustapha has got back my boy Yussuf but the Christian Sheykh-el-Hara has made his brother pay £2 whereat Mohammed looks very rueful. Two hundred men are gone out of our village to the works and of course the poor Hareem have not bread to eat as the men had to take all they had with them. I send you a very pretty story like Tannhäuser.
There was once a man who loved a woman that lived in the same quarter. But she was true to her husband, and his love was hopeless, and he suffered greatly. One day as he lay on his carpet sick with love, one came to him and said, O, such-a-one, thy beloved has died even now, and they are carrying her out to the tomb. So the lover arose and followed the funeral, and hid himself near the tomb, and when all were gone he broke it open, and uncovered the face of his beloved, and looked upon her, and passion overcame him, and he took from the dead that which when living she had ever denied him.
But he went back to the city and to his house in great grief and anguish of mind, and his sin troubled him. So he went to a Kadee, very pious and learned in the noble Koran, and told him his case, and said, ‘Oh my master the Kadee, can such a one as I obtain salvation and the forgiveness of God? I fear not.’ And the Kadee gave him a staff of polished wood which he held in his hand, and said ‘Who knoweth the mercy of God and his justice, but God alone—take then this staff and stick it in the sand beside the tomb where thou didst sin and leave it the night, and go next morning and come and tell me what thou shalt find, and may the Lord pardon thee, for thy sin is great.’
And the man went and did as the Kadee had desired, and went again at sunrise, and behold the staff had sprouted and was covered with leaves and fruit. And he returned and told the Kadee what had happened, and the Kadee replied, ‘Praise be to God, the merciful, the compassionate.’
To Mrs. Austin.
Luxor,April29, 1865.
Dearest Mutter,
Since I wrote last I have received the box with the cheese quite fresh (and very good it tastes), and the various things. Nothing called forth such a shout of joy from me as your photo of the village pothouse. How green and fresh and tidy! Many Mashallah’s have been uttered over thebeyt-el-fellaheen(peasant’s house) of England. The railings, especially, are a great marvel. I have also heard from Janet that Ross has bought me a boat for £200 which is to take four of his agents to Assouan and then come back for me. So all my business is settled, and,Inshallah! I shall depart in another three or four weeks.
The weather is quite cool and fresh again but the winds very violent and the dust pours over us like water from the dried up land, as well as from the Goomeh mountain. It is miserably uncomfortable, but my health is much better again—spite of all.
The Hakeem business goes on at a great rate. I think on an average I have four sick a day. Sometimes a dozen. A whole gipsy camp are great customers—the poor souls will bring all manner of gifts it goes to my heart to eat, but they can’t bear to be refused. They are astounded to hear that people of their blood live in England and that I knew many of their customs—which are the same here.
Kursheed Agha came to take final leave being appointed to Keneh. He had been at Gau and had seen Fadil Pasha sit and make the soldiers lay sixty men down on their backs by ten at a time andchopthem to death with the pioneers’ axes. He estimated the people killed—men, women, and children at 1,600—but Mounier tells me it was over 2,000. Sheykh Hassan agreed exactly with Kursheed, only the Arab was full of horror and the Circassian full of exultation. His talk was exactly what we all once heard about ‘Pandies,’ and he looked and talked and laughed so like a fine young English soldier, that I was ashamed to call him the kelb (dog) which rose to my tongue, and I bestowed it on Fadil Pasha instead. I must also say in behalf of my own countrymen that theyhadprovocation while here there was none. Poor Haggee Sultan lies in chains at Keneh. One of the best and kindest of men! I am to go and take secret messages to him, and money from certain men of religion to bribe the Moudir with. The Shurafa who have asked me to do this are from another place, as well as a few of the Abu-l-Hajjajieh. A very great Shereef indeed from lower Egypt, said to me the other day, ‘Thou knowest if I am a Muslim or no. Well, I pray to the most Merciful to send us Europeans to govern us, and to deliver us from these wicked men.’ We were all sitting after the funeral of one of the Shurafa and I was sitting between the Shereef of Luxor and the Imám—and this was said before thirty or forty men, all Shurafa. No one said ‘No,’ and many assented aloud.
The Shereef asked me to lend him the New Testament, it was a pretty copy and when he admired it I said, ‘From me to thee, oh my master the Shereef, write in it as we do in remembrance of a friend—the gift of a Nazraneeyeh who loves the Muslimeen.’ The old man kissed the book and said ‘I will write moreover—to a Muslim who loves all such Christians’—and after this the old Sheykh of Abou Ali took me aside and asked me to go as messenger to Haggee Sultan for if one of them took the money it would be taken from them and the man get no good by it.
Soldiers are now to be quartered in the Saeed—a new plague worse than all the rest. Do not the cawasses already rob the poor enough? They fix their own price in the market and beat the sakkas as sole payment. What will the soldiers do? The taxes are being illegally levied on lands which aresheragi,i.e.totally unwatered by the last Nile and therefore exemptby law—and the people are driven to desperation. I feel sure there will be more troubles as soon as there arises any other demagogue like Achmet et-Tayib to incite the people and now every Arab sympathises with him. Janet has written me the Cairo version of the affair cooked for the European taste—and monstrous it is. The Pasha accuses some Sheykh of the Arabs of having gone from Upper Egypt to India to stir up the Mutiny against us!Pourquoi pasto conspire in Paris or London? It is too childish to talk of a poor Saeedee Arab going to a country of whose language and whereabouts he is totally ignorant, in order to conspire against people who never hurt him. You may suppose how Yussuf and I talk by ourselves of all these things. He urged me to try hard to get my husband here as Consul-General—assuming that he would feel as I do. I said, my master is not young, and to a just man the wrong of such a place would be a martyrdom. ‘Truly thou hast said it, but it is a martyr we Arabs want; shall not the reward of him who suffers daily vexation for his brethren’s sake be equal to that of him who dies in battle for the faith? If thou wert a man, I would say to thee, take the labour and sorrow upon thee, and thine own heart will repay thee.’ He too said like the old Sheykh, ‘I only pray for Europeans to rule us—now the fellaheen are really worse off than any slaves.’ I am sick of telling of the daily oppressions and robberies. If a man has a sheep, the Moodir comes and eats it, if a tree, it goes to the Nazir’s kitchen. My poor sakka is beaten by the cawasses in sole payment of his skins of water—and then people wonder my poor friends tell lies and bury their money.
I now know everybody in my village and the ‘cunning women’ have set up the theory that my eye is lucky; so I am asked to go and look at young brides, visit houses that are building, inspect cattle, etc. as a bringer of good luck—which gives me many a curious sight.
I went a few days ago to the wedding of handsome Sheykh Hassan the Abab’deh, who married the butcher’s pretty little daughter. The group of women and girls lighted by the lantern which little Achmet carried up for me was the most striking thing I have seen. The bride—a lovely girl of ten or eleven all in scarlet, a tall dark slave of Hassan’s blazing with gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, with long twisted locks of coal black hair and such glittering eyes and teeth, the wonderful wrinkled old women, and the pretty, wondering, yet fearless children were beyond description. The mother brought the bride up to me and unveiled her and asked me to let her kiss my hand, and to look at her, I said all the usualBismillah Mashallah’s, and after a time went to the men who were eating, all but Hassan who sat apart and who begged me to sit by him, and whispered anxious enquiries about hisaroosah’slooks. After a time he went to visit her and returned in half an hour very shy and covering his face and hand and kissed the hands of the chief guests. Then we all departed and the girl was taken to look at the Nile, and then to her husband’s house. Last night he gave me a dinner—a very good dinner indeed, in his house which is equal to a very poor cattle shed at home. We were only five. Sheykh Yussuf, Omar, an elderly merchant and I. Hassan wanted to serve us but I made him sit.
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 bookachouat(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 asSitt 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 aSalaam Aleykeefrom 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—thekalemfor writing, about two feet long and of the size of a quill. I took it and showed it to the Bimbashee and said—‘Behold thenebootwherewith 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 Christiankhanzeereh(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 onesits 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 foryoursafety, 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 thisdouce illusionand 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.
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 themelocheeaof 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 hisdevoirsto 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, feltlibdeh(scull cap), with his blue cottonmelayatied 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 largekasneh(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-fiveevenan 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 theFathahfor him,’ and he called on all the people ‘El Fathahfor 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 ammuchbetter now. A man from the Azhar is reading the Koran for me outside—while another is gone with candles to Seyeedele Zeynet ‘the fanatics!’
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Cairo,June16, 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 thekasnehwould 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.
To Mrs. Austin.
Alexandria,October28, 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 aminstalléat 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 Englishgentlemento 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 comfortingErscheinungenI 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.
To Mrs. Austin.
Alexandria,November2, 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 asham spliceto avert the evil eye from such a fine new piece of wood! Of course I dare not have the blemish renewed orgarethe 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.
To Mrs. Austin.
Cairo,Monday,November27, 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 wastant bien que malready.
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 Religionsimplies 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—andWallah! 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.
To Mrs. Austin.
Cairo,December5, 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 licensedpossenreisserare 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 allmoolidsand 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 prétextethat 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 moreharamthan any pork or wine or blood of beasts.’ Of course such sentiments are not to be repeated—but they are general. Themeneggetswho 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 forEffendeena—no wonder his steamers don’t pay.
I saw Ross yesterday—he tells me the Shereef of Mecca has sent him a horse.
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Thebes,From December25, 1865,to January3, 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 (videantique sculptures and paintings), and the men towing, when suddenly something rose to the surface close to us: the men cried outBeni 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 Saeedeepoint 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 manyMashallah’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 thezaboot(brown shirt) and thelibdeh, 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 (thespecialitéof Keneh);gullehsandzees—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 thatdu 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 Catholicfêtesalso; but moreprononcéhere. Dancing girls, glittering with gold brocade and coins, swaggered about among the brown-shirted fellaheen, and the profane singing of theAlateeyehmingled 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 aFattahfor me and another for my family, we retired to anotherkubbeh, 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 themoolidwas 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 moreFattahswere 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 Frenchprotégé. 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 incurrentpiastres on the understanding that he is to get the money from Government intariff—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 rememberle citoyen est élargiof 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 villagescloseon 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 betheantidote. 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.
To Maurice Duff Gordon.
Luxor,January3, 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 seenrealhorsemanship 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.
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Monday,January15, 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 subemployé, nor is the discontent any longer whispered. Everyone talks aloud—and well they may.
To Mrs. Austin.
Tuesday, 7Ramadan.
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 aconfrère: 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 moreausführlichand 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: quiteune 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 Muslimhonnête 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 ladiesqui savent nagerso 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 allleste—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 ofpolitikeh, the Greek word for what we should call flummery; and my sayinglazim(you must, or ratheril faut), instead of humble entreaties. I told him to teach me better, but he laughed heartily, and said, ‘No, no, when you saylazim, it islazim, and nobody wants the stick to force him to sayHadr(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 ofsim(poison).’ I shook my head, and said, I did not recollectal 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 byel-baharieh(the boatmen), and call itel-mereeseh.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘the clever gentlemen say that I am wrong altogether, and never can have seen arealSamoom, 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 theGanassil(Europeans) take thee for a rat, oh lady? Whoever heard ofel 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,theydon’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 allAllah kereemand 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 sayAllah kereem, or should I use the legs God has given me to escape from it?’