is politeness, so that one may not be supposed to be envious of one’s neighbours’ nice things.  My Sakka (water carrier) admired my bracelet yesterday, as he was watering the verandah floor, and instantly told me of all the gold necklaces and earrings he had bought for his wife and daughters, that I might not be uneasy and fear his envious eye.  He is such a good fellow.  For two shillings a month he brings up eight or ten huge skins of water from the river a day, and never begs or complains, always merry and civil.  I shall enlarge his backsheesh.  There are a lot of camels who sleep in the yard under my verandah; they are pretty and smell nice, but they growl and swear at night abominably.  I wish I could draw you an Egyptian farm-yard, men, women and cattle; but what no one can draw is the amber light, so brilliant and so soft, not like the Cape diamond sunshine at all, but equally beautiful, hotter and less dazzling.  There is no glare in Egypt like in the South of France, and, I suppose, in Italy.

Thursday.—­I went yesterday afternoon to the island again to see the crops, and show Sally my friend farmer Omar’s house and Mustapha’s village.  Of course we had to eat, and did not come home till the moon had long risen.  Mustapha’s brother Abdurachman walked about with us, such a noble-looking man, tall, spare, dignified and active, grey-bearded and hard-featured, but as lithe and bright-eyed as a boy, scorning any conveyance but his own feet, and quite dry while we ‘ran down.’  He was like Boaz, the wealthy gentleman peasant—­nothing except the Biblical characters gave any idea of the rich fellah.  We sat and drank new milk in a ‘lodge in a garden of cucumbers’ (the ‘lodge’ is a neat hut of palm branches), and saw the moon rise over the mountains and light up everything like a softer sun.  Here you see all colours as well by moonlight as by day; hence it does not look as brilliant as the Cape moon, or even as I have seen in Paris, where it throws sharp black shadows and white light.  The night here is a tender, subdued, dreamy sort of enchanted-looking day.  My Turkish acquaintance from Karnac has just been here; he boasted of his house in Damascus, and invited me to go with him after the harvest here, also of his beautiful wife in Syria, and then begged me not to mention her to his wives here.

It is very hot now; what will it be in June?  It is now 86 degrees in my shady room at noon; it will be hotter at two or three.  But the mornings and evenings are delicious.  I am shedding my clothes by degrees; stockings are unbearable.  Meanwhile my cough is almost gone, and the pain is quite gone.  I feel much stronger, too; the horrible feeling of exhaustion has left me; I suppose I must have salamander blood in my body to be made lively by such heat.  Sally is quite well; she does not seem at all the worse at present.