Thursday, June 2,—­A steamer has just arrived which will take this letter, so I can only say good-bye, my dearest Mutter, and God bless you.  I continue very fairly well.  The epidemic here is all but over; but my medical fame has spread so, that the poor souls come twenty miles (from Koos) for physic.  The constant phrase of ’Oh our sister, God hath sent thee to look to us!’ is so sad. Such a little help is a wonder to my poor fellaheen.  It is not so hot as it was I think, except at night, and I now sleep half the night outside the house.  The cattle are all dead; perhaps five are left in all Luxor. Allah kereem! (God is merciful) said fellah Omar, ‘I have one left from fifty-four.’  The grain is unthreshed, and butter three shillings a pound!  We get nothing here but by post; no papers, no nothing.  I suppose the high Nile will bring up boats.  Now the river is down at its lowest, and now I really know how Egyptians live.

June 12, 1864:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, Sunday, June 12, 1864.

Dearest Alick,

Three letters have I received from you within a few days, for the post of the Saeed is not that of the Medes and Persians.  I have had an abominable toothache, which quite floored me, and was aggravated by the Oriental custom, namely, that all the beau monde of Thebes would come and sit with me, and suggest remedies, and look into my mouth, and make quite a business of my tooth.  Sheykh Yussuf laid two fingers on my cheek and recited verses from the Koran, I regret to say with no effect, except that while his fingers touched me the pain ceased.  I find he is celebrated for soothing headaches and other nervous pains, and I daresay is an unconscious mesmeriser.  The other day our poor Maohn was terrified by a communication from Ali Bey (Moudir of Keneh) to the effect that he had heard from Alexandria that someone had reported that the dead cattle had lain about the streets of Luxor and that the place was pestilential.  The British mind at once suggested a counter-statement, to be signed by the most respectable inhabitants.  So the Cadi drew it up, and came and read it to me, and took my deposition and witnessed my signature, and the Maohn went his way rejoicing, in that ‘the words of the Englishwoman’ would utterly defeat Ali Bey.  The truth was that the worthy Maohn worked really hard, and superintended the horrible dead cattle business in person, which is some risk and very unpleasant.  To dispose of three or four hundred dead oxen every day with a limited number of labourers is no trifle, and if a travelling Englishman smells one a mile off he calls us ‘lazy Arabs.’  The beasts could not be buried deep enough, but all were carried a mile off from the village.  I wish some of the dilettanti who stop their noses at us in our trouble had to see or to do what I have seen and done.