I am tolerably well, but I am growing very homesick--or rather
children-sick. As the time slips on I get more and more the feeling of
all I am losing of my children. We have delicious weather here and have
had all the time; there has been no cold at all this winter here.
M. Prevost Paradol is here for a few days--a very pleasant man indeed,
and a little good European talk is a very agreeable interlude to the Arab
prosiness, or rather _enfantillage_, on the part of the women. I have
sought about for shells and a few have been brought me from the Cataract,
but of snails I can learn no tidings nor have I ever seen one, neither
can I discover that there are any shells in the Nile mud. At the first
Cataract they are found sticking to the rocks. The people here are very
stupid about natural objects that are of no use to them. Like with the
French small birds are all sparrows, and wild flowers there are none, and
only about five varieties of trees in all Egypt.
This is a sad year--all the cattle are dead, the Nile is now as low as it
was last July, and the song of the men watering with the _shadoofs_
sounds sadly true as they chant _Ana ga-ahn_, etc. 'I am hungry, I am
hungry for a piece of dourrah bread,' sings one, and the other chimes in,
_Meskeen_, _meskeen_ 'Poor man, poor man,' or else they sing a song about
Seyyidna Iyoob 'Our master Job' and his patience. It is sadly
appropriate now and rings on all sides as the _shadoofs_ are greatly
multiplied for lack of oxen to turn the _sakiahs_ (waterwheels). All is
terribly dear, and many are sick from sheer weakness owing to poor food;
and then I hear fifty thousand are to be taken to work at the canal from
Geezeh to Siout through the Fayoum. The only comfort is the enormous
rise of wages, which however falls heavy on the rich. The sailors who
got forty to fifty piastres five years ago now get three to five hundred
piastres a month. So I fear I must give up my project of a dahabieh. If
the new French Consul-General 'knows not Joseph' and turns me out, I am
to live in a new house which Sheykh Yussuf is now building and of which
he would give me the terrace and build three rooms on it for me. I wish
I got better or worse, and could go home. I do get better, but _so_
slowly, I cough a good deal at times, and I am very thin, but not so weak
as I was or so breathless.