Yesterday to see your old friend, Mrs. Greene.[3] She was charming, lying in bed dressed in blue satin and white lace, quite lovely to behold. She told me of Willie Greene’s fine boys; the eldest, son of the first wife, lives with her. I can still repeat every poem in W. G.’s two books, “Imogen” and the “Wild Cat Express.” His second marriage to his first love, Sally Austin, was most romantic, and has turned out a very happy one!
River Nile. On board the Rameses III. December 11, 1895. If you are as cold to-day in Boston as I am in Egypt, I am sorry for you. It is bitter, bitter! The journey began with a sandstorm. Egypt is Egypt still; this unseasonable weather will pass soon, and we shall have the usual cloudless skies. There are always the camels, the people, the dahabeahs, donkeys and palm trees, but I am glad I first saw it before it had become quite so much a beaten track for “trotters.” I have a little nig called Abdul for chambermaid. I like him better than anybody on the ship. We can’t talk much, but I teach him “trunk” and he says “skunk”, and I teach him “bottle” and he says “throttle”, which is pleasant.
Also I like M. Angier, a French gentleman, a lieutenant in the army. He is from Lyons, a legitimist, a devoted Catholic and an earnest little person. His amazement at the American Meess is amusing. The sunsets are supreme, the river as beautiful, the people, camels, donkeys, goats and buffaloes as picturesque as when you and I saw them. In Cairo things are changed; here on the Nile all is as in the days of Joseph. I read my Bible a great deal, looking up all references to Moses and all the rest of them.
Assouan. December 21, 1895. It is all as wonderful as ever. New temples, some of them unearthed by your Egyptian Exploration Fund, some by the French, are on every side. We arrived at Assouan yesterday. There is a small English garrison here and we had some of the pretty officers over to dance with the girls. Isabel is the sweetest-tempered creature alive. It’s nearly three months since we set sail; in all this time she has never been anything but sweet and docile. I think this is remarkable. The beauty of these Nubians is something you will remember. I am in a state of perfect delight all the time at the perfection of their type! The “black Hamburg bloom”, as you called it, makes white people look pale and washed out. I should like to buy one of these Nubians and bring him home as a present to you. Do you remember Constance Rothschild’s Nubian and how faithful he was to her? Oh, the beauty of Elephantine Island! and best of all, Philae lies before us to-morrow. This morning to the bazaars with M. Philipon, an Egyptologist, to pick up some trifles and to the quarries where we saw the half-cut obelisk lying there all unfinished. There are hotels now at Luxor and Assouan. I grow deeply interested in the lore of Egypt. I should like to pass a year here. I begin to understand the theory of hieroglyphics and would undertake to read the simple ones in six months. It’s a fascinating subject, the first step beyond mere picture language. We are living on very familiar terms with Thothmes, Rameses and Queen Hatasu.
I am not sure whether it was upon this visit or a subsequent one, that I saw in the Museum at Cairo the mummied face of the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the time of Joseph. The features and the hair were so well preserved that one gathers just what sort of looking man this Pharaoh must have been. Of all the wonders that Archaeology has revealed nothing has so much impressed me as looking upon the very face that Joseph saw.
Jaffa. January 1, 1896. It’s all just as it was! The house of Simon the Tanner, the queer little hotel kept by the German religious colonists, the big oranges, the delay of the steamer. We are toiling away at the Old and New Testaments. Have much enjoyed talks with young Bliss, son of President Bliss of Beirut College, a learned man bred for the orthodox church and now a sort of Unitarian. He is excavating in and about Jerusalem and is tracing the site of the old walls. We flounder along in Biblical history. We have now got the Jews out of Egypt and pulled Jericho about the ears of the unfortunate inhabitants. We have stopped the sun in the Valley and hanged the Five Kings. Now we are tackling Saul, David and Solomon. How perfectly gorgeous that old heathen’s love songs are!
The Bible you gave me before I left has proved invaluable. All through Palestine my Bible and my guidebook have hardly left my hands. My knowledge of the oratorios comes in well. I shall enjoy them as never before when I get back to Boston.
“What is the difference between Elisha and Elijah?” I heard an American tourist ask the other day. The words of our great basso, Myron Whitney, rang in my ears; I heard the stirring chorus from the “Elijah”!
I heard the tourist just quoted say to a fellow traveler:
“To-morrow we are going to see the Garden of the Yosemite,” meaning the Garden of Gethsemane. This showed how sadly the study of the Bible is neglected in modern education.