To Maurice Duff Gordon.
Cairo,
June 22, 1866.
Maurice my Darling,
I send you a Roman coin which a man gave me as a fee for medical attendance. I hope you will like it for your watch-chain. I made our Coptic goldsmith bore a hole in it. Why don’t you write to me, you young rascal? I am now living in my boat, and I often wish for you here to donkey ride about with me. I can’t write you a proper letter now as Omar is waiting to take this up to Mr. Palgrave with the drawings for your father. Omar desires his best salaam to you and to Rainie, and is very much disappointed that you are not coming out in the winter to go up to Luxor. We had a hurricane coming down the Nile, and a boat behind us sank. We only lost an anchor, and had to wait and have it fished up by the fishermen of a neighbouring village. In places the water was so shallow that the men had to push the boat over by main force, and all went into the river. The captain and I shouted out, Islam el Islam, equivalent to, ‘Heave away, boys.’ There are splendid illuminations about to take place here, because the Pasha has got leave to make his youngest boy his successor, and people are ordered to rejoice, which they do with much grumbling—it will cost something enormous.
July 10, 1866: Mrs. Austin
To Mrs. Austin.
Off Boulak, Cairo,
July 10, 1866.
Dearest Mutter,
I am much better again. My cold went off without a violent illness and I was only weak and nervous. I am very comfortable here, anchored off Boulak, with my Reis and one sailor who cleans and washes my clothes which Omar irons, as at Luxor, as he found the washerwomen here charged five francs a dozen for all small things and more for dresses. A bad hashash boy turned Achmet’s head, who ran away for two days and spent a dollar in riotous living; he returned penitent, and got no fatted calf, but dry bread and a confiscation of his new clothes.
The heat, when I left Luxor, was prodigious. I was detained three days by the death of Sheykh Yussuf’s poor little wife and baby (in childbirth) so I was forced to stay and eat the funeral feast, and be present at the Khatmeh (reading of the Koran on the third night), or it would not have seemed kind. The Kadee gave me a very curious prayer-book, the Guide of the Faithful, written in Darfour! in beautiful characters, and with very singular decorations, and in splendid binding. It contains the names of all the prophets and of the hundred appellations of Mohammed, and is therefore a powerful hegab or talisman. He requested me never to give it away and always to keep it with me. Such books cannot be bought with money at all. I also bought a most beautiful hegab of cornelian set in enamel, the verse of the throne splendidly engraved, and dated 250 years ago. I sent over by Palgrave to Alick M. Brune’s lovely drawings of Luxor and Karnac, and to Maurice a gold coin which I received as a fee from an old Bedawee.