My boat has not yet made its appearance.  I am very well indeed now, in spite, or perhaps because of, the great heat.  But there is a great deal of sickness—­chiefly dysentery.  I never get less than four new patients a day and my ‘practice’ has become quite a serious business.  I spent all day on Friday in the Abab’deh quarters where Sheykh Hassan and his slave Rahmeh were both uncommonly ill.  Both are ‘all right’ now.  Rahmeh is the nicest negro I ever knew, and a very great friend of mine.  He is a most excellent, honest, sincere man, and an Effendi (i.e. writes and reads) which is more than his master can do.  He has seen all the queer people in the interior of Africa.

The Sheykh of the Bishareen—­eight days’ journey from Assouan has invited me and promises me all the meat and milk I can eat, they have nothing else.  They live on a high mountain and are very fine handsome people.  If only I were strong I could go to very odd places where Frangees are not.  Read a very stupid novel (as a story) called ’le Secret du Bonheur’—­it gives the truest impression of the manners of Arabs that I have read—­by Ernest Feydeau.  According to his book achouat (we are brothers).  The ‘caressant’ ways of Arabs are so well described.

It is the same here.  The people come and pat and stroke me with their hands, and one corner of my brown abbaieh is faded with much kissing.  I am hailed as Sitt Betaana ‘Our own Lady,’ and now the people are really enthusiastic because I refused the offer of some cawasses as a guard which a Bimbashee made me.  As if I would have such fellows to help to bully my friends.  The said Bimbashee (next in rank to a Bey) a coarse man like an Arnoout, stopped here a day and night and played his little Turkish game, telling me to beware—­for the Ulema hated all Franks and set the people against us—­and telling the Arabs that Christian Hakeems were all given to poison Muslims.  So at night I dropped in at the Maohn’s with Sheykh Yussuf carrying my lantern—­and was loudly hailed with a Salaam Aleykee from the old Shereef himself—­who began praising the Gospel I had given him, and me at the same time.  Yussuf had a little reed in his hand—­the kalem for writing, about two feet long and of the size of a quill.  I took it and showed it to the Bimbashee and said—­’Behold the neboot wherewith we are all to be murdered by this Sheykh of the Religion.’  The Bimbashee’s bristly moustache bristled savagely, for he felt that the ‘Arab dogs’ and the Christian khanzeereh (feminine pig) were laughing at it together.

Another steam boat load of prisoners from Gau has just gone up.  A little comfort is derived here from the news that, ’Praise be to God, Moussa Pasha (Governor of the Soudan) is dead and gone to Hell.’  It must take no trifle to send him there judging by the quiet way in which Fadil Pasha is mentioned.