I write on the chance that this may go safe by post so that you may not
think me lost. I left Luxor on May 31, got to Siout (half-way) in a
week, and have ever since been battling with an unceasing furious north
and north-east wind. I feel like the much travelled Odysseus, and have
seen 'villages and men,' unlike him, however 'my companions' have neither
grumbled nor deserted, though it is a bad business for them, having
received their money at the rate of about twenty days' pay, for which
they must take me to Cairo. They have eaten all, and are now obliged to
stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humoured as if all were
well. My fleet consisted of my dahabieh, flag ship; tender, a _kyasseh_
(cargo boat) for my horse and sais, wherein were packed two extremely
poor shrivelled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in
garrison there; lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of butter, onions
and lentils for all the lads of 'my family' studying at Gama'l Azhar,
besides in my box queer little stores of long hoarded money for those
_megowareen_ (students of Gama'l Azhar). Don't you wish you could
provide for Maurice with a sack of bread, a basket of onions and one
pound sixteen shillings?
The handsome brown Sheykh el-Arab, Hassan, wanted me to take him, but I
knew him to be a 'fast' man, and asked Yussuf how I could avoid it
without breaking the laws of hospitality, so my 'father,' the old
Shereef, told Hassan that he did not choose his daughter to travel with a
wine-bibber and a frequenter of loose company. Under my convoy sailed
two or three little boats with family parties. One of these was very
pretty, whose steersman was a charming little fat girl of five years old.
All these hoped to escape being caught and worried by the way, by
belonging to me, and they dropped off at their several villages. I am
tolerably well, better than when I started, in spite of the wind.
Poor Reis Mohammed had a very bad attack of ophthalmia, and sat all of a
heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting 'I am a Muslim,'
equivalent to 'God's will be done.' At one place I was known, and had a
lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all
with meat and _fateereh_. The part of the river in which we were kept by
the high wind is made cheerful by the custom of the Hareem being just as
free to mix with men as Europeans, and I quite enjoyed the pretty girls'
faces, and the gossip with the women who came to fill their water-jars
and peep in at the cabin windows, which, by the way, they always ask
leave to do. The Sheykh el-Hawara gave me two sheep which are in the
cargo-boat with four others--all presents--which Omar intends you to eat
at Cairo. The Sheykh is very anxious to give you an entertainment at his
palace, if you come up the river, with horse-riding, feasting and dancing
girls. In fact I am charged with many messages to _el-Kebir_ (the great
master).