I am tired of telling all the plackereien of our poor people, how three hundred and ten men were dragged off on Easter Monday with their bread and tools, how in four days they were all sent back from Keneh, because there were no orders about them, and made to pay their boat hire.  Then in five days they were sent for again.  Meanwhile the harvest was cut green, and the wheat is lying out unthreshed to be devoured by birds and rats, and the men’s bread was wasted and spoiled with the hauling in and out of boats.  I am obliged to send camels twenty miles for charcoal, because the Abab’deh won’t bring it to market any more, the tax is too heavy.  Butter too we have to buy secretly, none comes into the market.  When I remember the lovely smiling landscape which I first beheld from my windows, swarming with beasts and men, and look at the dreary waste now, I feel the ‘foot of the Turk’ heavy indeed.  Where there were fifty donkeys there is but one; camels, horses, all are gone; not only the horned cattle, even the dogs are more than decimated, and the hawks and vultures seem to me fewer; mankind has no food to spare for hangers-on.  The donkeys are sold, the camels confiscated, and the dogs dead (the one sole advantage).  Meat is cheap, as everyone must sell to pay taxes and no one has money to buy.  I am implored to take sheep and poultry for what I will give.

May 23, 1867:  Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.  LUXOR, May 23, 1867.

Dearest Mutter,

I have only time for a few words by Giafar Pasha, who goes early to-morrow morning.  My boat arrived all right and brought your tin box.  The books and toys are very welcome.  The latter threw little Darfour into ecstasies, and he got into disgrace for ‘playing with the Sitt’ instead of minding some business on hand.  I fear I shall spoil him, he is so extremely engaging and such a baby.  He is still changing his teeth, so cannot be more than eight; at first I did not like him, and feared he was sullen, but it was the usual khoss (fear), the word that is always in one’s ears, and now that is gone, he is always coming hopping in to play with me.  He is extremely intelligent and has a pretty baby nigger face.  The Darfour people are, as you know, an independent and brave people, and by no means ‘savages.’  I can’t help thinking how pleased Rainie would be with the child.  He asked me to give him the picture of the English Sultaneh out of the Illustrated London News, and has pasted it inside the lid of his box.

I am better as usual, since the hot weather has begun, the last six days.  I shall leave this in a week, I think, and Mustapha and Yussuf will go with me to Cairo.  Yussuf was quite enchanted with your note to him; his eyes glistened, and he took an envelope to keep it carefully.  Omar said such a letter is like a hegab (amulet) and Yussuf said, ’Truly it is, and I could never have one with more baraka (blessing) or more like the virtue which went out of Jesus, if ever I wore one at all; I will never part with it.’