Passenger steamboats come now every fortnight, but I have had no letter for a month.  I have no almanack and have lost count of European time—­to-day is the 3 of Ramadan, that is all I know.  The poor black slave was sent back from Keneh, God knows why—­because he had no money and the Moudir could not ‘eat off him’ as he could off the money and property—­he believes.  He is a capital fellow, and in order to compensate me for what he eats he proposed to wash for me, and you would be amused to see Khayr with his coal-black face and filed teeth doing laundry-maid out in the yard.  He fears the family will sell him and hopes he may fetch a good price for ’his boy’—­only on the other hand he would so like me to buy him—­and so his mind is disturbed.  Meanwhile the having all my clothes washed clean is a great luxury.

The steamer is come and I must finish in haste.  I have corrected the proofs.  There is not much to alter, and though I regret several lost letters I can’t replace them.  I tried, but it felt like a forgery.  Do you cut out and correct, dearest Mutter, you will do it much better than I.

January 8, 1865:  Dowager Lady Duff Gordon

To the Dowager Lady Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, January 8, 1865.

Dear Old Lady,

I received your kind letter in the midst of the drumming and piping and chanting and firing of guns and pistols and scampering of horses which constitute a religious festival in Egypt.  The last day of the moolid of Abu-l-Hajjaj fell on the 1st January so you came to wish me ’May all the year be good to thee’ as the people here were civil enough to do when I told them it was the first day of the Frankish year. (The Christian year here begins in September.)

I was very sorry to hear of poor Lady Theresa’s (Lady Theresa Lewis) death.  I feel as if I had no right to survive people whom I left well and strong when I came away so ill.  As usual the air of Upper Egypt has revived me again, but I am still weak and thin, and hear many lamentations at my altered looks.  However, ’Inshallah, thou wilt soon be better.’

Why don’t you make Alexander edit your letters from Spain?  I am sure they would be far more amusing than mine can possibly be—­for you can write letters and I never could.  I wish I had Miss Berry’s though I never did think her such a genius as most people, but her letters must be amusing from the time when they were written.  Alexander will tell you how heavy the hand of Pharaoh is upon this poor people.  ’My father scourged you with whips but I will scourge you with scorpions,’ did not Rehoboam say so? or I forget which King of Judah.  The distress here is frightful in all classes, and no man’s life is safe.