other a
superb Arab with most _grande dame_ manners, dressed in white cotton and
with unpainted face, received me statelily. Her house would drive you
wild, such antique enamelled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all
divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very
old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house.
A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration,
and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite
imperiousness. One of our great ladies can't half crush a rival in
comparison, she does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced,
black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open
the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the
neighbours would say at the sight of my face and European hat. She asked
about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very
kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her
eye--she had none.

_Tuesday_.--The post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must
stay in bed and cannot write much. I go on Thursday and shall go to
Briggs' house. Pray write to me at Cairo. Sally and I are both unwell
and anxious to get up the river. I can't write more.

October 31, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

KAFR ZEYAT,
_October_ 31, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

We left Alexandria on Thursday about noon, and sailed with a fair wind
along the Mahmoudieh Canal. My little boat flies like a bird, and my men
are a capital set of fellows, bold and careful sailors. I have only
seven in all, but they work well, and at a pinch Omar leaves the pots and
pans and handles a rope or a pole manfully. We sailed all night and
passed the locks at Atleh at four o'clock yesterday, and were greeted by
old Nile tearing down like a torrent. The river is magnificent, 'seven
men's height,' my Reis says, above its usual pitch; it has gone down five
or six feet and left a sad scene of havoc on either side. However what
the Nile takes he repays with threefold interest, they say. The women
are at work rebuilding their mud huts, and the men repairing the dykes.
A Frenchman told me he was on board a Pasha's steamer under M. de
Lesseps' command, and they passed a fl