h crys of joy
'ez-zaghareet' down to the river. I find, on inquiry, that in Upper
Egypt, as soon as the bridegroom has 'taken the face' of his bride, the
women take her down to 'see the Nile.' They have not yet forgotten that
the old god is the giver of increase, it seems.

I have been reading Miss Martineau's book; the descriptions are
excellent, but she evidently knew and cared nothing about the people, and
had the feeling of most English people here, that the difference of
manners is a sort of impassable gulf, the truth being that their feelings
and passions are just like our own. It is curious that all the old books
of travels that I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a
far more natural tone, and with far more attempt to discriminate
character, than modern ones, _e.g._, Niebuhr's Travels here and in
Arabia, Cook's Voyages, and many others. _Have_ we grown so _very_
civilized since a hundred years that outlandish people seem like mere
puppets, and not like real human beings? Miss M.'s bigotry against Copts
and Greeks is droll enough, compared to her very proper reverence for
'Him who sleeps in Philae,' and her attack upon hareems outrageous; she
implies that they are brothels. I must admit that I have not seen a
Turkish hareem, and she apparently saw no other, and yet she fancies the
morals of Turkey to be superior to those of Egypt. It is not possible
for a woman to explain all the limitations to which ordinary people do
subject themselves. Great men I know nothing of; but women can and do,
without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full 'payment of debt,'
and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries
a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother's widow and children,
or the like. Of course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere.
_Kulloolum Beni Adam_ (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf says
constantly, 'bad-bad and good-good'; and modern travellers show strange
ignorance in talking of foreign natives _in the lump_, as they nearly all
do.

_Monday_.--I have just heard that poor Sheykh Mohammed died yesterday,
and was, as usual, buried at once. I had not been well for a few days,
and Sheykh Yussuf took care that I should not know of his brother's
death. He went to Mustapha A'gha, and told him not to tell anyone in my
house till I was better, because he knew 'what was in my stomach towards
his family,' and feared I should be made worse by t