The great heat has begun these last three days. My cough is better and I am grown fatter again. The Nile is so low that I fancy that six weeks or two months hence I shall have to go down in two little boats—even now the dahabiehs keep sticking fast continually. I have promised some neighbours to bring back a little seed corn for them, some of the best English wheat without beard. All the wheat here is bearded and they have an ambition for some of ours. I long to bring them wheelbarrows and spades and pickaxes. The great folks get steamploughs, but the labourers work with their bare hands and a rush basket pour tout potage, and it takes six to do the work of one who has got good tools.
March 25, 1865: Mrs. Ross
To Mrs. Ross.
Luxor,
March 25, 1865.
Dearest Janet,
I hope you have not had visions of me plundered and massacred by the crazy darweesh who has caused the destruction of Gau and three other villages. I assure you we are quite quiet here and moreover have arranged matters for our defence if Achmet et Tayib should honour us with a visit. The heat has just set in, thermometer 89° to-day, of course I am much better, fatter and cough less.
Many thanks to Henry about Achmet Ibn-Mustapha, but his father is going to send him to England into Mr. Fowler’s workshop, which will be a much better training I think. Mr. Fowler takes him without a premium most kindly. Lord Dudley will tell you what a splendid entertainment I gave him; I think he was quite frightened at the sight of the tray and the black fingers in the dishes.
The Abab’deh Sheykh and his handsome brother propose to take me to the moolid of Sheykh-el-Shadhilee (the coffee saint) in the desert to see all the wild Abab’deh and Bishareeyeh. It is very tempting, if I feel pretty well I must go I think and perhaps the change might do me good. They believe no European ever went to that festival. There are camel-races and a great show of pretty girls says the handsome Hassan. A fine young Circassian cawass here has volunteered to be my servant anywhere and to fight anybody for me because I have cured his pretty wife. You would love Kursheed with his clear blue eyes, fair face and brisk neat soldierly air. He has a Crimean medal and such a lot of daggers and pistols and is such a tremendous Muslim, but never-the-less he loves me and tells me all his affairs and how tiresome his wife’s mother is. I tell him all wives’ mothers always are, but he swears Wallahi, Howagah (Mr.) Ross don’t say so, Wallahi, Inshallah!
March 30, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.