May 15, 1864:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, May 15, 1864, Day before Eed-el-Kebir (Bairam).

Dearest Alick,

We returned to Luxor the evening before last just after dark.  The salute which Omar fired with your old horse-pistols brought down a lot of people, and there was a chorus of Alhamdulilah Salaameh ya Sitt, and such a kissing of hands, and ‘Welcome home to your place’ and ’We have tasted your absence and found it bitter,’ etc., etc.  Mustapha came with letters for me, and Yussuf beaming with smiles, and Mahommed with new bread made of new wheat, and Suleyman with flowers, and little Achmet rushing in wildly to kiss hands.  When the welcome had subsided, Yussuf, who stayed to tea, told me all the cattle were dead.  Mustapha lost thirty-four, and has three left; and poor farmer Omar lost all—­forty head.  The distress in Upper Egypt will now be fearful.  Within six weeks all our cattle are dead.  They are threshing the corn with donkeys, and men are turning the sakiahs (water-wheels) and drawing the ploughs, and dying by scores of overwork and want of food in many places.  The whole agriculture depended on the oxen, and they are all dead.  At El-Moutaneh and the nine villages round Halim Pasha’s estate 24,000 head have died; four beasts were left when we were there three days ago.

We spent two days and nights at Philae and Wallahy! it was hot.  The basalt rocks which enclose the river all round the island were burning.  Sally and I slept in the Osiris chamber, on the roof of the temple, on our air-beds.  Omar lay across the doorway to guard us, and Arthur and his Copt, with the well-bred sailor Ramadan, were sent to bivouac on the Pylon.  Ramadan took the hareem under his special and most respectful charge, and waited on us devotedly, but never raised his eyes to our faces, or spoke till spoken to.  Philae is six or seven miles from Assouan, and we went on donkeys through the beautiful Shellaleeh (the village of the cataract), and the noble place of tombs of Assouan.  Great was the amazement of everyone at seeing Europeans so out of season; we were like swallows in January to them.  I could not sleep for the heat in the room, and threw on an abbayeh (cloak) and went and lay on the parapet of the temple.  What a night!  What a lovely view!  The stars gave as much light as the moon in Europe, and all but the cataract was still as death and glowing hot, and the palm-trees were more graceful and dreamy than ever.  Then Omar woke, and came and sat at my feet, and rubbed them, and sang a song of a Turkish slave.  I said, ’Do not rub my feet, oh brother—­that is not fit for thee’ (because it is below the dignity of a free Muslim altogether to touch shoes or feet), but he sang in his song, ’The slave of the Turk may be set free by money, but how shall