melancholy that I know he was the lover of the Sultan’s favourite slave. How I wish you were here to enjoy all this, so new, so beautiful, and yet so familiar, life—and you would like the people, poor things! they are complete children, but amiable children.
I went into the village here, where I was a curiosity, and some women took me into their houses and showed me their sleeping-place, cookery, poultry, etc.; and a man followed me to keep off the children, but no backsheesh was asked for, which showed that Europeans were rare there. The utter destitution is terrible to see, though in this climate of course it matters less, but the much-talked-of dirt is simply utter poverty. The poor souls are as clean as Nile mud and water will make their bodies, and they have not a second shirt, or any bed but dried mud.
Give my love to my darlings, and don’t be uneasy if you don’t get letters. My cough has been better now for five days without a bad return of it, so I hope it is really better; it is the first reprieve for so long. The sun is so hot, a regular broil, November 21, and all doors and windows open in the cabin—a delicious breeze.
November 30, 1862: Mrs. Austin
To Mrs. Austin.
Feshn,
Monday, November 30, 1862.
Dearest Mutter,
I have now been enjoying this most delightful way of life for ten days, and am certainly much better. I begin to eat and sleep again, and cough less. My crew are a great amusement to me. They are mostly men from near the first Cataract above Assouan, sleek-skinned, gentle, patient, merry black fellows. The little black Reis is the very picture of good-nature and full of fun, ‘chaffing’ the girls as we pass the villages, and always smiling. The steersman is of lighter complexion, also very cheery, but decidedly pious. He prays five times a day and utters ejaculations to the apostle Rusool continually. He hurt his ankle on one leg and his instep on the other with a rusty nail, and they festered. I dressed them with poultices, and then with lint and strapping, with perfect success, to the great admiration of all hands, and he announced how much better he felt, ‘Alhamdulillah, kieth-el-hairack khateer ya Sitti’ (Praise be to God and thanks without end O Lady), and everyone echoed, ‘kieth-el-hairack khateer.’ The most important person is the ‘weled’—boy—Achmet. The most merry, clever, omnipresent little rascal, with an ugly little pug face, a shape like an antique Cupid, liberally displayed, and a skin of dark brown velvet. His voice, shrill and clear, is always heard foremost; he cooks for the crew, he jumps overboard with the rope and gives advice on all occasions, grinds the coffee with the end of a stick in a mortar, which he holds between his feet, and uses the same large stick to walk proudly before me, brandishing it if I go ashore for a minute, and ordering everybody out of the way. ‘Ya Achmet!’ resounds all day whenever anybody wants anything, and the ‘weled’ is always ready and able. My favourite is Osman, a tall, long-limbed black who seems to have stepped out of a hieroglyphical drawing, shirt, skull-cap and all. He has only those two garments, and how anyone contrives to look so inconceivably ‘neat and respectable’ (as Sally truly remarked) in that costume is a mystery. He is always at work, always cheerful, but rather silent—in short, the able seaman and steady, respectable ‘hand’ par excellence. Then we have El Zankalonee from near Cairo, an old fellow of white complexion and a valuable person, an inexhaustible teller of stories at night and always en train, full of jokes and remarkable for a dry humour much relished by the crew. I wish I understood the stories, which sound delightful, all about Sultans and Efreets, with effective ‘points,’ at which all hands exclaim ‘Mashallah!’ or ‘Ah!’ (as long as you can drawl it). The jokes, perhaps, I may as well be ignorant of. There is a certain Shereef who does nothing but laugh and work and be obliging; helps Omar with one hand and Sally with the other, and looks like a great innocent black child. The rest of the dozen are of various colours, sizes and ages, some quite old, but all very quiet and well-behaved.
We have had either dead calm or contrary wind all the time and the men have worked very hard at the tow-rope. On Friday I proclaimed a halt in the afternoon at a village at prayer-time for the pious Muslims to go to the mosque; this gave great satisfaction, though only five went, Reis, steersman, Zankalonee and two old men. The up-river men never pray at all, and Osman occupied himself by buying salt out of another boat and stowing it away to take up to his family, as it is terribly dear high up the river. At Benisouef we halted to buy meat and bread, it is comme qui dirait an assize town, there is one butcher who kills one sheep a day. I walked about the streets escorted by Omar in front and two sailors with huge staves behind, and created a sensation accordingly. It is a dull little country town with a wretched palace of Said Pasha. On Sunday we halted at Bibbeh, where I caught sight of a large Coptic church and sallied forth to see whether they would let me in. The road lay past the house of the headman of the village, and there ‘in the gate’ sat a patriarch, surrounded by his servants and his cattle. Over the gateway were crosses and queer constellations of dots, more like Mithraic symbols than anything Christian, but Girgis was a Copt, though the chosen head of the Muslim village. He rose as I came up, stepped out and salaamed, then took my hand and said I must go into his house before I saw the church and enter the hareem. His old mother, who looked a hundred, and his pretty wife, were very friendly; but, as I had to leave Omar at the door, our talk soon came to an end, and Girgis took me out into the divan, without the sacred precincts of the hareem. Of course we had pipes and coffee, and he pressed me to stay some days, to eat with him every day and to accept all his house contained. I took the milk he offered, and asked him to visit me in the boat, saying I must return before sunset when it gets cold, as I was ill. The house was a curious specimen of a wealthy man’s house—I could not describe it if I tried, but I felt I was acting a passage of the Old Testament. We went to the church, which outside looked like nine beehives in a box. Inside, the nine domes resting on square pillars were very handsome. Girgis was putting it into thorough repair at his own expense, and it will cost a good deal, I think, to repair and renew the fine old wood panelling of such minute and intricate workmanship. The church is divided by three screens; one in front of the eastern three domes is impervious and conceals the holy of holies. He opened the horseshoe door for me to look in, but explained that no Hareem might cross the threshold. All was in confusion owing to the repairs which were actively going on without the slightest regard to Sunday; but he took up a large bundle, kissed it, and showed it me. What it contained I cannot guess, and I scrupled to inquire through a Muslim interpreter. To the right of this sanctum is the tomb of a Muslim saint! enclosed under the adjoining dome. Here we went in and Girgis kissed the tomb on one side while Omar salaamed it on the other—a pleasant sight. They were much more particular about our shoes than in the mosques. Omar wanted to tie handkerchiefs over my boots like at Cairo, but the priest objected and made me take them off and march about in the brick and mortar rubbish in my stockings. I wished to hear the service, but it was not till sunset, and, as far as I could make out, not different on Sunday to other days. The Hareems are behind the screen furthest removed from the holy screen, behind a third screen where also was the font, locked up and shaped like a Muslim tomb in little. (Hareem is used here just like the German Frauenzimmer, to mean a respectable woman. Girgis spoke of me to Omar as ‘Hareem.’) The Copts have but one wife, but they shut her up much closer than the Arabs. The children were sweetly pretty, so unlike the Arab brats, and the men very good-looking. They did not seem to acknowledge me at all as a co-religionnaire, and asked whether we of the English religion did not marry our brothers and sisters.
The priest then asked me to drink coffee at his house close by, and there I ‘sat in the gate’—i.e., in a large sort of den raised 2 feet from the ground and matted, to the left of the gate. A crowd of Copts collected and squatted about, and we were joined by the mason who was repairing the church, a fine, burly, rough-bearded old Mussulman, who told how the Sheykh buried in the church of Bibbeh had appeared to him three nights running at Cairo and ordered him to leave his work and go to Bibbeh and mend his church,
