To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  BENISOUEF, June 30, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

I write on the chance that this may go safe by post so that you may not think me lost.  I left Luxor on May 31, got to Siout (half-way) in a week, and have ever since been battling with an unceasing furious north and north-east wind.  I feel like the much travelled Odysseus, and have seen ‘villages and men,’ unlike him, however ‘my companions’ have neither grumbled nor deserted, though it is a bad business for them, having received their money at the rate of about twenty days’ pay, for which they must take me to Cairo.  They have eaten all, and are now obliged to stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humoured as if all were well.  My fleet consisted of my dahabieh, flag ship; tender, a kyasseh (cargo boat) for my horse and sais, wherein were packed two extremely poor shrivelled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in garrison there; lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of butter, onions and lentils for all the lads of ‘my family’ studying at Gama’l Azhar, besides in my box queer little stores of long hoarded money for those megowareen (students of Gama’l Azhar).  Don’t you wish you could provide for Maurice with a sack of bread, a basket of onions and one pound sixteen shillings?

The handsome brown Sheykh el-Arab, Hassan, wanted me to take him, but I knew him to be a ‘fast’ man, and asked Yussuf how I could avoid it without breaking the laws of hospitality, so my ‘father,’ the old Shereef, told Hassan that he did not choose his daughter to travel with a wine-bibber and a frequenter of loose company.  Under my convoy sailed two or three little boats with family parties.  One of these was very pretty, whose steersman was a charming little fat girl of five years old.  All these hoped to escape being caught and worried by the way, by belonging to me, and they dropped off at their several villages.  I am tolerably well, better than when I started, in spite of the wind.

Poor Reis Mohammed had a very bad attack of ophthalmia, and sat all of a heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting ‘I am a Muslim,’ equivalent to ‘God’s will be done.’  At one place I was known, and had a lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all with meat and fateereh.  The part of the river in which we were kept by the high wind is made cheerful by the custom of the Hareem being just as free to mix with men as Europeans, and I quite enjoyed the pretty girls’ faces, and the gossip with the women who came to fill their water-jars and peep in at the cabin windows, which, by the way, they always ask leave to do.  The Sheykh el-Hawara gave me two sheep which are in the cargo-boat with four others—­all presents—­which Omar intends you to eat at Cairo.  The Sheykh is very anxious to give you an entertainment at his palace, if you come up the river, with horse-riding, feasting and dancing girls.  In fact I am charged with many messages to el-Kebir (the great master).