To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Alexandria,
October 26, 1863.
Dearest Alick,
I went to two hareems the other day with a little boy of Mustapha Aga’s, and was much pleased. A very pleasant Turkish lady put out all her splendid bedding and dresses for me, and was most amiable. At another a superb Arab with most grande dame manners, dressed in white cotton and with unpainted face, received me statelily. Her house would drive you wild, such antique enamelled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house. A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite imperiousness. One of our great ladies can’t half crush a rival in comparison, she does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbours would say at the sight of my face and European hat. She asked about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her eye—she had none.
Tuesday.—The post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must stay in bed and cannot write much. I go on Thursday and shall go to Briggs’ house. Pray write to me at Cairo. Sally and I are both unwell and anxious to get up the river. I can’t write more.
October 31, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Kafr Zeyat,
October 31, 1863.
Dearest Alick,
We left Alexandria on Thursday about noon, and sailed with a fair wind along the Mahmoudieh Canal. My little boat flies like a bird, and my men are a capital set of fellows, bold and careful sailors. I have only seven in all, but they work well, and at a pinch Omar leaves the pots and pans and handles a rope or a pole manfully. We sailed all night and passed the locks at Atleh at four o’clock yesterday, and were greeted by old Nile tearing down like a torrent. The river is magnificent, ‘seven men’s height,’ my Reis says, above its usual pitch; it has gone down five or six feet and left a sad scene of havoc on either side. However what the Nile takes he repays with threefold interest, they say. The women are at work rebuilding their mud huts, and the men repairing the dykes. A Frenchman told me he was on board a Pasha’s steamer under M. de Lesseps’ command, and they passed a flooded village where two hundred or so people stood on their roofs crying for help. Would you, could you, believe it that they passed on and left them to drown? None but an eyewitness could have made me believe such villainy.