CAIRO,
_July_ 17, 1866.
Dearest Alick,
I am perfectly comfortable now with my aquatic _menage_. The Reis is
very well behaved and steady and careful, and the sort of Caliban of a
sailor is a very worthy savage. Omar of course is hardworked--what with
going to market, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and generally keeping
everything in nice order but he won't hear of a maid of any sort. No
wonder!
A clever old Reis has just come and over-hauled the bottom of the boat,
and says he can mend her without taking her out of the water. We shall
see; it will be great luck if he can. As I am the river doctor, all the
sailoring men are glad to do me a civility.
We have had the hottest of summers; it is now 98 in the cabin. I have
felt very unwell, but my blue devils are quite gone, and I am altogether
better. What a miserable war it is in Europe! I am most anxious for the
next papers. Here it is money misery; the Pasha is something like
bankrupt, and no one has had a day's pay these three months, even
pensions of sixty piastres a month (seven shillings) to poor old female
slaves of Mahommed Ali's are stopped.
_August_ 4.--The heat is and has been something fearful: we are all
panting and puffing. I can't think what Palgrave meant about my being
tired of poor old Egypt; I am very happy and comfortable, only I felt
rather weak and poorly this year, and sometimes, I suppose, rather
_wacham_, as the Arabs say, after you and the children. The heat, too,
has made me lazy--it is 110 in the cabin, and 96 at night.
I saw the _Moolid en-Nebbee_ (Festival of the Prophet), and the wonderful
_Doseh_ (treading); it is an awful sight; so many men drunk with
religious ardour. {293} I also went to a Turkish Hareem, where my
darweesh friends sent me; it is just like a tea-party at Hampton Court,
only handsomer, not as to the ladies, but the clothes, furniture and
jewels, and not a bit like the description in Mrs. Lott's most
extraordinary book. Nothing is so clean as a Turkish hareem, the
furniture is Dutch as to cleanliness, and their persons only like
themselves--but oh! how dull and _triste_ it all seemed. One nice lady
said to me, 'If I had a husband and children like thee, I would die a
hundred times rather than leave them for an hour,' another envied me the
power of going into the street and seeing the _Doseh_. She had never
seen it, and never would.
To-morrow Olagnier will dine and spend the night here, to see the cutting
of the canal, and the 'Bride of the Nile' on Monday morning. We shall
sail up to old Cairo in the evening with the Bride's boat; also Hajjee
Hannah is coming for the fantasia; after the high Nile we shall take the
boat out and caulk her and then, if the excessive heat continues, I
rather think of a month's jaunt to Beyrout just to freshen me up. Hajjee
Ali is there, with all his travelling materials and tents, so I need only
take Omar and a bath and carpet-bag. If the weather gets cool I shall
stay in my boat. The heat is far more oppressive here than it was at
Luxor two years ago; it is not so dry. The Viceroy is afraid of cholera,
and worried the poor Hajjees this year with most useless quarantine. The
_Mahmal_ was smuggled into Cairo before sunrise, without the usual
honours, and all sightseers and holiday makers disappointed, and all good
Muslims deeply offended. The idea that the Pasha has turned Christian or
even Jew is spreading fast; I hear it on all sides. The new firman
illegitimatising so many of his children is of course just as agreeable
to a sincere Moslem as a law sanctioning polygamy for our royal family
would be with us.