We are now in the full enjoyment of summer weather; there has been no cold for fully a fortnight, and I am getting better every day now.  My cough has quite subsided, and the pain in the chest much diminished; if the heat does not overpower me I feel sure it will be very healing to my lungs.  I sit out on my glorious balcony and drink the air from early morning till noon, when the sun comes upon it and drives me under cover.  The thermometer has stood at 64 degrees for a fortnight or three weeks, rising sometimes to 67 degrees, but people in the boats tell me it is still cold at night on the river.  Up here, only a stone’s-throw from it, it is warm all night.  I fear the loss of cattle has suspended irrigation to a fearful extent, and that the harvests of Lower Egypt of all kinds will be sadly scanty.  The disease has not spread above Minieh, or very slightly; but, of course, cattle will rise in price here also.  Already food is getting dearer here; meat is 4.5 piastres—­7d.—­the rotl (a fraction less than a pound), and bread has risen considerably—­I should say corn, for no bakers exist here.  I pay a woman to grind and bake my wheat which I buy, and delicious bread it is.  It is impossible to say how exactly like the early parts of the Bible every act of life is here, and how totally new it seems when one reads it here.  Old Jacob’s speech to Pharaoh really made me laugh (don’t be shocked), because it is so exactly what a fellah says to a Pasha:  ‘Few and evil have been the days,’ etc. (Jacob being a most prosperous man); but it is manners to say all that, and I feel quite kindly to Jacob, whom I used to think ungrateful and discontented; and when I go to Sidi Omar’s farm, does he not say, ‘Take now fine meal and bake cakes quickly,’ and wants to kill a kid? Fateereh with plenty of butter is what the ‘three men’ who came to Abraham ate; and the way that Abraham’s chief memlook, acting as Vakeel, manages Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah!  All the vulgarized associations with Puritanism and abominable little ‘Scripture tales and pictures’ peel off here, and the inimitably truthful representation of life and character—­not a flattering one certainly—­comes out, and it feels like Homer.  Joseph’s tears and his love for the brother born of the same mother is so perfect.  Only one sees what a bad inferior race the Beni Israel were compared to the Beni Ishmael or to the Egyptians.  Leviticus and Deuteronomy are so very heathenish compared to the law of the Koran, or to the early days of Abraham.  Verily the ancient Jews were a foul nation, judging by the police regulations needful for them.  Please don’t make these remarks public, or I shall be burnt with Stanley and Colenso (unless I suffer Sheykh Yussuf to propose me El-Islam).  He and M. de Rouge were here last evening, and we had an Arabic soiree.  M. de Rouge speaks admirably, quite like an Alim, and it was charming to see Sheykh Yussuf’s pretty