. Here is a
thing happening within a few weeks and within sixty miles, and already
the events assume a legendary character. Achmet et-Tayib is not dead and
where the bullets hit him he shows little marks like burns. The affair
began thus: A certain Copt had a Muslim slave-girl who could read the
Koran and who served him. He wanted her to be his Hareem and she refused
and went to Achmet et-Tayib who offered money for her to her master. He
refused it and insisted on his rights, backed by the Government, and
thereupon Achmet proclaimed a revolt and the people, tired of taxes and
oppressions, said 'we will go with thee.' This is the only bit of
religious legend connected with the business. But Achmet et-Tayib still
sits in the Island, invisible to the Turkish soldiers who are still
there.

Now for a little fact. The man who told me fourteen hundred had been
beheaded was Hassan Sheykh of the Abab'deh who went to Gau to bring up
the prisoners. The boat stopped a mile above Luxor, and my Mohammed, a
most quiet respectable man and not at all a romancer went up in her to
El-Moutaneh. I rode with him along the Island. When we came near the
boat she went on as far as the point of the Island, and I turned back
after only looking at her from the bank and smelling the smell of a
slave-ship. It never occurred to me, I own, that the Bey on board had
fled before a solitary woman on a donkey, but so it was. He told the
Abab'deh Sheykh on board not to speak to me or to let me on board, and
told the Captain to go a mile or two further. Mohammed heard all this.
He found on board 'one hundred prisoners less two' (ninety-eight). Among
them the Moudir of Souhaj, a Turk, in chains and wooden handcuffs like
the rest. Mohammed took him some coffee and was civil to him. He says
the poor creatures are dreadfully ill-used by the Abab'deh and the
Nubians (Berberi) who guard them.

It is more curious than you can conceive to hear all the people say. It
is just like going back four or five centuries at least, but with the
heterogeneous element of steamers, electric telegraphs and the Bey's
dread of the English lady's pen--at least Mohammed attributed his flight
to fear of that weapon. It was quite clear that European eyes were
dreaded, as the boat stopped three miles above Luxor and its dahabiehs,
and had all its things carried that distance.

Yussuf and his uncle want to take me next year to Mecca, the good folks
in Mecca would h