Tuesday, October 20.

Omar has got a boat for 13 pounds, which is not more than the railway would cost now that half must be done by steamer and a bit on donkeys or on foot.  Poor Hajjee Hannah was quite knocked up by the journey down; I shall take her up in my boat.  Two and a half hours to sit grilling at noonday on the banks, and two miles to walk carrying one’s own baggage is hard lines for a fat old woman.  Everything is almost double in price owing to the cattle murrain and the high Nile.  Such an inundation as this year was never known before.  Does the blue God resent Speke’s intrusion on his privacy?  It will be a glorious sight, but the damage to crops, and even to the last year’s stacks of grain and beans, is frightful.  One sails among the palm-trees and over the submerged cotton-fields.  Ismail Pasha has been very active, but, alas! his ‘eye is bad,’ and there have been as many calamities as under Pharaoh in his short reign.  The cattle murrain is fearful, and is now beginning in Cairo and Upper Egypt.  Ross reckons the loss at twelve millions sterling in cattle.  The gazelles in the desert have it too, but not horses, asses or goats.

October 26, 1863:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  ALEXANDRIA, October 26, 1863.

Dearest Alick,

I went to two hareems the other day with a little boy of Mustapha Aga’s, and was much pleased.  A very pleasant Turkish lady put out all her splendid bedding and dresses for me, and was most amiable.  At another a superb Arab with most grande dame manners, dressed in white cotton and with unpainted face, received me statelily.  Her house would drive you wild, such antique enamelled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house.  A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite imperiousness.  One of our great ladies can’t half crush a rival in comparison, she does it too coarsely.  The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers.  Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbours would say at the sight of my face and European hat.  She asked about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her eye—­she had none.

Tuesday.—­The post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must stay in bed and cannot write much.  I go on Thursday and shall go to Briggs’ house.  Pray write to me at Cairo.  Sally and I are both unwell and anxious to get up the river.  I can’t write more.

October 31, 1863:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon