I am getting better every day now. My
cough has quite subsided, and the pain in the chest much diminished; if
the heat does not overpower me I feel sure it will be very healing to my
lungs. I sit out on my glorious balcony and drink the air from early
morning till noon, when the sun comes upon it and drives me under cover.
The thermometer has stood at 64 degrees for a fortnight or three weeks,
rising sometimes to 67 degrees, but people in the boats tell me it is
still cold at night on the river. Up here, only a stone's-throw from it,
it is warm all night. I fear the loss of cattle has suspended irrigation
to a fearful extent, and that the harvests of Lower Egypt of all kinds
will be sadly scanty. The disease has not spread above Minieh, or very
slightly; but, of course, cattle will rise in price here also. Already
food is getting dearer here; meat is 4.5 piastres--7d.--the _rotl_ (a
fraction less than a pound), and bread has risen considerably--I should
say corn, for no bakers exist here. I pay a woman to grind and bake my
wheat which I buy, and delicious bread it is. It is impossible to say
how exactly like the early parts of the Bible every act of life is here,
and how totally new it seems when one reads it here. Old Jacob's speech
to Pharaoh really made me laugh (don't be shocked), because it is so
exactly what a fellah says to a Pasha: 'Few and evil have been the days,'
etc. (Jacob being a most prosperous man); but it is manners to say all
that, and I feel quite kindly to Jacob, whom I used to think ungrateful
and discontented; and when I go to Sidi Omar's farm, does he not say,
'Take now fine meal and bake cakes quickly,' and wants to kill a kid?
_Fateereh_ with plenty of butter is what the 'three men' who came to
Abraham ate; and the way that Abraham's chief memlook, acting as Vakeel,
manages Isaac's marriage with Rebekah! All the vulgarized associations
with Puritanism and abominable little 'Scripture tales and pictures' peel
off here, and the inimitably truthful representation of life and
character--not a flattering one certainly--comes out, and it feels like
Homer. Joseph's tears and his love for the brother born of the _same
mother_ is so perfect. Only one sees what a bad inferior race the Beni
Israel were compared to the Beni Ishmael or to the Egyptians. Leviticus
and Deuteronomy are so very heathenish compared to the law of the Koran,
or to the early days of Abraham. Verily the ancient Jews were