The mosquitoes are pretty bad at night here, and we have to sleep in nets. Last week we had two days with a south wind blowing, and then the beasts—creeping, crawling, and flying—were a trial; there were great wasps (quite three times as large as English ones), and horrid little beasts that look like bugs (only they fly and don't bite) settling on our dinner-table;—I am sure the south wind must have been blowing in the time of the plagues of Egypt!
I am busy collecting things that we want to take up the Nile for our house, as we shall then be 450 miles from the nearest shop, and it is rather difficult, as I don't know at all what the house is like.
There are so many things that I should like to do and see in Cairo, but I have not time, as we are leaving by the first tourist steamer that goes up the Nile, and I don't like to be out for any length of time, but I did manage a visit to the great native hospital, the Kasr-el-Aini, where I know several of the sisters.
It is a very fine place with a very up-to-date theatre; the nurses are all natives (men for the male patients), but they all work under the English sisters.
The sisters have a most delightful Home, their dining and drawing rooms are very spacious apartments, and they each have a very large room, which most of them screen off into bed and sitting rooms.
There is a special fund which provides a carriage and pair for their use, and they have a very good tennis court in their garden, in which they are "At Home" one day each week, and the Cairo people go to tea with them and to play tennis.
I have not told you a word about the native bazaars and all the quaint sights of the Cairo streets, but every one writes about them, and I find them too dazzling to describe. I could sit for hours on the balcony at Shepherd's Hotel just doing nothing but watch the people. Take my advice, and come to see Cairo some day, for it is a most fascinating place, and I am quite loth to leave it.