July 29, 1867:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  BOULAK, July 29, 1867.

Dearest Alick,

Your letter has arrived to my great relief—­only I fear you are not at all well.  About Maurice.  If he wishes to see the Nile let him come, but if he is only to be sent because of me, let it alone.  I know I am oppressive company now, and am apt, like Mr. Wodehouse in ‘Emma,’ to say, ‘Let us all have some gruel.’

We know nothing here of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite.  Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile.  That absurd speech about slaves he made in Paris shows that.  With 3,000 in his hareem, several slave regiments, and lots of gangs on all his sugar plantations, his impudence is wonderful.  He is himself the greatest living slave trader as well as owner.  My lads are afraid to go out alone for fear of being snapped up by cawasses and taken to the army or the sugar works.  You will be sorry to hear that your stalwart friend Hassan has had fifty blows on each foot-sole, and had to pay six pounds.  He was taking two donkeys to Shepheard’s hotel before sunrise for a French lady and gentleman to go to the Pyramids, when a cawass met him, seized the donkeys, and on Hassan’s refusal to give them up, spat on the side-saddle and reviled Hassan’s own Hareem and began to beat him with his courbash.  Hassan got impatient, took the cawass up in his arms and threw him on the ground, and went on.  Presently four cawasses came after him, seized him and took him to the Zaptieh (police office), where they all swore he had beaten them, torn their clothes, and robbed one of an imaginary gold watch—­all valued at twenty-four pounds.  After the beating he was carried to prison in chains, and there sentenced to be a soldier.  A friend however interfered and settled the matter for six pounds.  Hassan sends you his best salaam.

Last night was very pretty—­all the boats starting for the moolid of Seyd el-Bedawee at Tanta.  Every boat had a sort of pyramid of lanterns, and the derweeshes chanted, and the worldly folks had profane music and singing, and I sat and looked and listened, and thought how many thousand years ago just the same thing was going on in honour of Bubastis.

August 7, 1867:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  BOULAK, August 7, 1867.

My Dearest Alick,

Two sailors of mine of last year went to Paris in the dahabieh for the Empress, and are just come back.  When I see them I expect I shall have some fun out of their account of their journey.  Poor Adam’s father died of grief at his son’s going, nothing would persuade him that Adam would come back safe, and having a heart complaint, he died.  And now the lad is back, well and with fine clothes, but is much cut up, I hear, by his father’s death.  Please send me a tremendous whistle; mine is not loud enough to wake Omar at the other end of the cabin; a boatswain’s whistle or something in the line of the ‘last trump’ is needed to wake sleeping Arabs.