The weather is already much warmer, it is nine in the evening, we are steaming along and I sit with the cabin window open.  My cough is, of course, a great deal better. Inshallah!  Above Keneh (about another 150 miles) it will go away.  To-day, for the first time, I pulled my cloak over my head in the sun, it was so stinging hot—­quite delicious, and it is the 5th of January. Poveri voi in the cold!  Our captain was prisoner for three years at Moscow and at Bakshi Serai, and declares he never saw the sun at all—­hard lines for an Egyptian.  Do you remember the cigarettes you bought for me at Eaux Bonnes?  Well, I gave them to the old Turkish Effendi, who is dreadfully asthmatic, and he is enchanted; of course five other people came to be cured directly.  The rhubarb pills are a real comfort to travellers, for they can’t do much harm, and inspire great confidence.

Luckily we left all the fleas behind in the fore-cabin, for the benefit of the poor old Turk, who, I hear, suffers severely.  The divans were all brand-new, and the fleas came in the cotton stuffing, for there are no live things of any sort in the rest of the boat.

GIRGEH,
January 9, 1864.

We have put in here for the night.  To-day we took on board three convicts in chains, two bound for Fazogloo, one for calumny and perjury, and one for manslaughter.  Hard labour for life in that climate will soon dispose of them.  The third is a petty thief from Keneh who has been a year in chains in the Custom-house of Alexandria, and is now being taken back to be shown in his own place in his chains.  The causes celebres of this country would be curious reading; they do their crimes so differently to us.  If I can get hold of anyone who can relate a few cases well, I’ll write them down.  Omar has told me a few, but he may not know the details quite exactly.

I made further inquiries about the Bedawee lady, who is older than she looks, for she has travelled constantly for ten years.  She is rich and much respected, and received in all the best houses, where she sits with the men all day and sleeps in the hareem.  She has been in the interior of Africa and to Mecca, speaks Turkish, and M. Mounier says he found her extremely agreeable, full of interesting information about all the countries she had visited.  As soon as I can talk I must try and find her out; she likes the company of Europeans.

Here is a contribution to folk-lore, new even to Lane I think.  When the coffee-seller lights his stove in the morning, he makes two cups of coffee of the best and nicely sugared, and pours them out all over the stove, saying, ’God bless or favour Sheykh Shadhilee and his descendants.’  The blessing on the saint who invented coffee of course I knew, and often utter, but the libation is new to me.  You see the ancient religion crops up even through the severe faith of Islam.  If I could describe all the details of an Arab, and still more of a Coptic,