The villages look like slight elevations in the mud banks cut into square shapes.  The best houses have neither paint, whitewash, plaster, bricks nor windows, nor any visible roofs.  They don’t give one the notion of human dwellings at all at first, but soon the eye gets used to the absence of all that constitutes a house in Europe, the impression of wretchedness wears off, and one sees how picturesque they are, with palm-trees and tall pigeon-houses, and here and there the dome over a saint’s tomb.  The men at work on the river-banks are exactly the same colour as the Nile mud, with just the warmer hue of the blood circulating beneath the skin.  Prometheus has just formed them out of the universal material at hand, and the sun breathed life into them.  Poor fellows—­even the boatmen, ragged crew as they are—­say ‘Ah, Fellaheen!’ with a contemptuous pity when they see me watch the villagers at work.

The other day four huge barges passed us towed by a steamer and crammed with hundreds of the poor souls torn from their homes to work at the Isthmus of Suez, or some palace of the Pasha’s, for a nominal piastre a day, and find their own bread and water and cloak.  One of my crew, Andrasool, a black savage whose function is always to jump overboard whenever the rope gets entangled or anything is wanted, recognised some relations of his from a village close to Assouan.  There was much shouting and poor Andrasool looked very mournful all day.  It may be his turn next.  Some of the crew disloyally remarked that they were sure the men there wished they were working for a Sitti Ingleez, as Andrasool told them he was.  Think too what splendid pay it must be that the boat-owner can give out of 25 pounds a month to twelve men, after taking his own profits, the interest of money being enormous.

When I call my crew black, don’t think of negroes.  They are elegantly-shaped Arabs and all gentlemen in manners, and the black is transparent, with amber reflets under it in the sunshine; a negro looks blue beside them.  I have learned a great deal that is curious from Omar’s confidences, who tells me his family affairs and talks about the women of his family, which he would not to a man.  He refused to speak to his brother, a very grand dragoman, who was with the Prince of Wales, and who came up to us in the hotel at Cairo and addressed Omar, who turned his back on him.  I asked the reason, and Omar told me how his brother had a wife, ‘An old wife, been with him long time, very good wife.’  She had had three children—­all dead.  All at once the dragoman, who is much older than Omar, declared he would divorce her and marry a young woman.  Omar said, ’No, don’t do that; keep her in your house as head of your home, and take one of your two black slave girls as your Hareem.’  But the other insisted, and married a young Turkish wife; whereupon Omar took his poor old sister-in-law to live with him and his own young wife, and cut his