Your letter of the 10 December most luckily came on to Edfoo by the American Consul-General, who overtook us there in his steamer and gave me a lunch.  Maurice was as usual up to his knees in a distant swamp trying to shoot wild geese.  Now we are up close to Assouan, and there are no more marshes; but en revanche there are quails and kata, the beautiful little sand grouse.  I eat all that Maurice shoots, which I find very good for me; and as for Maurice he has got back his old round boyish face; he eats like an ogre, walks all day, sleeps like a top, bathes in the morning and has laid on flesh so that his clothes won’t button.  At Esneh we fell in with handsome Hassan, who is now Sheykh of the Abab’deh, as his elder brother died.  He gave us a letter to his brother at Syaleh, up in Nubia; ordering him to get up a gazelle hunt for Maurice, and I am to visit his wife.  I think it will be pleasant, as the Bedaween women don’t veil or shut up, and to judge by the men ought to be very handsome.  Both Hassan and Abu Goord, who was with him, preached the same sermon as my learned friend Abdurrachman had done at Luxor.  ’Why, in God’s name, I left my son without a wife?’ They are sincerely shocked at such indifference to a son’s happiness.

ASSOUAN,
10 Ramadan.

I have no almanach, but you will be able to know the date by your own red pocketbook, which determined the beginning of Ramadan at Luxor this year.  They received a telegram fixing it for Thursday, but Sheykh Yussuf said that he was sure the astronomers in London knew best, and made it Friday.  To-morrow we shall make our bargain, and next day go up the Cataract—­Inshallah, in safety.  The water is very good, as Jesus the black pilot tells me.  He goes to the second Cataract and back, as I intend to stay nearly two months in Nubia.  The weather here is perfect now, we have been lucky in having a lovely mild winter hitherto.  We are very comfortable with a capital crew, who are all devoted to Maurice.  The Sheykh of the Abab’deh has promised to join us if he can, when he has convoyed some 400 Bashibazouks up to Wady Halfa, who are being sent up because the English are in Abyssinia.

April, 1868:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, April, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

I have been too weak to write, but the heat set in three days ago and took away my cough, and I feel much better.  Maurice also flourishes in the broil, and protests against moving yet.  He speaks a good deal of Arabic and is friends with everyone.  It is Salaam aleykoum ya maris on all sides.  A Belgian has died here, and his two slaves, a very nice black boy and an Abyssinian girl, got my little varlet, Darfour, to coax me to take them under my protection, which I have done, as there appeared a strong probability that they would be ‘annexed’