We left Siout this afternoon.  The captain had announced that we should start at ten o’clock, so I did not go into the town, but sent Omar to buy food and give my letter and best salaam to Wassef.  But the men of Darfoor all went off declaring that they would stop, promising to cut off the captain’s head if he went without them.  Hassan Effendi, the Turk, was furious, and threatened to telegraph his complaints to Cairo if we did not go directly, and the poor captain was in a sad quandary.  He appealed to me, peaceably sitting on the trunk of a palm-tree with some poor fellaheen (of whom more anon).  I uttered the longest sentence I could compose in Arabic, to the effect that he was captain, and that while on the boat we were all bound to obey him. ’Mashallah! one English Hareem is worth more than ten men for sense; these Ingeleez have only one word both for themselves and for other people:  doghree—­doghree (right is right); this Ameereh is ready to obey like a memlook, and when she has to command—­whew!’—­with a most expressive toss back of the head.  The bank was crowded with poor fellaheen who had been taken for soldiers and sent to await the Pasha’s arrival at Girgeh; three weeks they lay there, and were then sent down to Soohaj (the Pasha wanted to see them himself and pick out the men he liked); eight days more at Soohaj, then to Siout eight days more, and meanwhile Ismail Pasha has gone back to Cairo and the poor souls may wait indefinitely, for no one will venture to remind the Pasha of their trifling existence. Wallah, wallah!

While I was walking on the bank with M. and Mme. Mounier, a person came up and saluted them whose appearance puzzled me.  Don’t call me a Persian when I tell you it was an eccentric Bedawee young lady.  She was eighteen or twenty at most, dressed like a young man, but small and feminine and rather pretty, except that one eye was blind.  Her dress was handsome, and she had women’s jewels, diamonds, etc., and a European watch and chain.  Her manner was excellent, quite ungenirt, and not the least impudent or swaggering, and I was told—­indeed, I could hear—­that her language was beautiful, a thing much esteemed among Arabs.  She is a virgin and fond of travelling and of men’s society, being very clever, so she has her dromedary and goes about quite alone.  No one seemed surprised, no one stared, and when I asked if it was proper, our captain was surprised.  ’Why not? if she does not wish to marry, she can go alone; if she does, she can marry—­what harm?  She is a virgin and free.’  She went to breakfast with the Mouniers on their boat (Mme. M. is Egyptian born, and both speak Arabic perfectly), and the young lady had many things to ask them, she said.  She expressed her opinions pretty freely as far as I could understand her.  Mme. Mounier had heard of her before, and said she was much respected and admired.  M. Mounier had heard that she was a spy of the Pasha’s, but the people on board the boat here say that the truth was that she went before Said Pasha herself to complain of some tyrannical Moodir who ground and imprisoned the fellaheen—­a bold thing for a girl to do.  To me she seems, anyhow, far the most curious thing I have yet seen.