Giafar Pasha backsheeshed me an abbayeh of crimson silk and gold, also a basket of coffee.  I was obliged to accept them as he sent his son with them, and to refuse would have been an insult, and as he is the one Turk I do think highly of I did not wish to affront him.  It was at Luxor on his way to Khartoum.  He also invited Maurice to Khartoum, and proposed to send a party to fetch him from Korosko, on the Nile.  Giafar is Viceroy of the Soudan, and a very quiet man, who does not ’eat the people.’

My best love to Janet, I’ll write soon to her, but I am lazy and Maurice is worse.  Omar nearly cried when Maurice went to Alexandria for a week.  ’I seem to feel how dull we shall be without him when he goes away for good,’ said he, and Darfour expresses his intention of going with Maurice.  ‘Thou must give me to the young man backsheesh,’ as he puts it, ‘because I have plenty of sense and shall tell him what to do.’  That is the little rascal’s sauce.  Terence’s slaves are true to the life here.

October 22, 1868:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  BOULAK, October 22, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

The unlucky journey to Syria almost cost me my life.  The climate is absolute poison to consumptive people.  In ten days after I arrived the doctor told me to settle my affairs, for I had probably only a few days to live, and certainly should never recover.  However I got better, and was carried on board the steamer, but am too weak for anything.  We were nearly shipwrecked coming back owing to the Russian captain having his bride on board and not minding his ship.  We bumped and scraped and rolled very unpleasantly.  At Beyrout the Sisters of Charity wouldn’t nurse a Protestant, nor the Prussians a non-Lutheran.  But Omar and Darfour nursed me better than Europeans ever do.  Little Blackie was as sharp about the physic as a born doctor’s boy when Omar was taking his turn of sleep.  I did not like the few Syrians I saw at all.

November 6, 1868:  Alick

BOULAK,
November 6, 1868.

Dearest Alick,

I am sure you will rejoice to hear that I am really better.  I now feel so much like living on a bit longer that I will ask you to send me a cargo of medicines.  I didn’t think it worth while before to ask for anything to be sent to me that could not be forwarded to Hades, but my old body seems very tough and I fancy I have still one or two of my nine lives left.

I hope to sail in a very few days, Maurice is going up to Cairo so I send this by him.  Yesterday was little Rainie’s birthday, and I thought very longingly of her.  The photo, of Leighton’s sketch of Janet I like very much.

January 25, 1869:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon