say all that. And I am much better and stronger. I
stood a long ride and some scrambling quite well last evening.

April 6, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_April_ 6, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

I received yours of March 10 two days ago; also one from Hekekian Bey,
much advising me to stay here the summer and get my disease 'evaporated.'
Since I last wrote the great heat abated, and we now have 76 to 80
degrees, with strong north breezes up the river--glorious
weather--neither too hot nor chilly at any time. Last evening I went out
to the threshing-floor to see the stately oxen treading out the corn, and
supped there with Abdurachman on roasted corn, sour cream, and eggs, and
saw the reapers take their wages, each a bundle of wheat according to the
work he had done--the most lovely sight. The graceful, half-naked, brown
figures loaded with sheaves; some had earned so much that their mothers
or wives had to help to carry it, and little fawn-like, stark-naked boys
trudged off, so proud of their little bundles of wheat or of _hummuz_ (a
sort of vetch much eaten both green and roasted). The _sakka_
(water-carrier), who has brought water for the men, gets a handful from
each, and drives home his donkey with empty waterskins and a heavy load
of wheat, and the barber who has shaved all these brown heads on credit
this year past gets his pay, and everyone is cheerful and happy in their
gentle, quiet way; here is no beer to make men sweaty and noisy and
vulgar; the harvest is the most exquisite pastoral you can conceive. The
men work seven hours in the day (_i.e._, eight, with half-hours to rest
and eat), and seven more during the night; they go home at sunset to
dinner, and sleep a bit, and then to work again--these 'lazy Arabs'! The
man who drives the oxen on the threshing-floor gets a measure and a half
for his day and night's work, of threshed corn, I mean. As soon as the
wheat, barley, _addas_ (lentils) and _hummuz_ are cut, we shall sow
_dourrah_ of two kinds, common maize and Egyptian, and plant sugar-cane,
and later cotton. The people work very hard, but here they eat well, and
being paid in corn they get the advantage of the high price of corn this
year.

I told you how my purse had been stolen and the proceedings therea