I rejoice to say that on Wednesday is Bairam, and to-morrow Ramadan ‘dies.’  Omar is very thin and yellow and headachy, and everyone is cross.  How I wish I were going, instead of my letter, to see you all, but it is evident that this heat is the thing that does me good, if anything will.

March 7, 1864:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, March 7, 1864.

Dearest Alick,

The real hot weather (speaking after the manner of the English) has begun, and the fine sun and clear air are delicious and reviving.  My cough fades away, and my strength increases slowly.  One can no longer go out in the middle of the day, and I mount my donkey early and late, with little Achmet trotting beside me.  In the evenings comes my dear Sheykh Yussuf, and I blunder through an hour’s dictation, and reading of the story of the Barber’s fifth brother (he with the basket of glass).  I presume that Yussuf likes me too, for I am constantly greeted with immense cordiality by graceful men in green turbans, belonging, like him, to the holy family of Sheykh Abu-’l-Hajjaj.  They inquire tenderly after my health, and pray for me, and hope I am going to stay among them.

You would be much struck here with the resemblance to Spain, I think.  ‘Cosas de Espana’ is exactly the ‘Shogl-el-Arab,’ and Don Fulano is the Arabic word foolan (such a one), as Ojala is Inshallah (please God).  The music and dancing here, too, are Spanish, only ‘more so’ and much more.

March 10, 1864.—­Yesterday was Bairam, and on Tuesday evening everybody who possessed a gun or a pistol banged away, every drum and taraboukeh was thumped, and all the children holloaed, Ramadan Mat, Ramadan Mat (Ramadan’s dead) about the streets.  At daybreak Omar went to the early prayer, a special ceremony of the day.  There were crowds of people, so, as it was useless to pray and preach in the mosque, Sheykh Yussuf went out upon a hillock in the burying-ground, where they all prayed and he preached.  Omar reported the sermon to me, as follows (it is all extempore):  First Yussuf pointed to the graves, ’Where are all those people?’ and to the ancient temples, ’Where are those who built them?  Do not strangers from a far country take away their very corpses to wonder at?  What did their splendour avail them? etc., etc.  What then, O Muslims, will avail that you may be happy when that comes which will come for all?  Truly God is just and will defraud no man, and He will reward you if you do what is right; and that is, to wrong no man, neither in person, nor in his family, nor in his possessions. Cease then to cheat one another, O men, and to be greedy, and do not think that you can make amends by afterwards giving alms, or praying, or fasting, or giving gifts to the servants of the mosque. Benefits