to figure a huge flower with
white pistils. Arab gardeners beat French flower-girls in bouquets.

July 17, 1866: Alick

CAIRO,
_July_ 17, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

I am perfectly comfortable now with my aquatic _menage_. The Reis is
very well behaved and steady and careful, and the sort of Caliban of a
sailor is a very worthy savage. Omar of course is hardworked--what with
going to market, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and generally keeping
everything in nice order but he won't hear of a maid of any sort. No
wonder!

A clever old Reis has just come and over-hauled the bottom of the boat,
and says he can mend her without taking her out of the water. We shall
see; it will be great luck if he can. As I am the river doctor, all the
sailoring men are glad to do me a civility.

We have had the hottest of summers; it is now 98 in the cabin. I have
felt very unwell, but my blue devils are quite gone, and I am altogether
better. What a miserable war it is in Europe! I am most anxious for the
next papers. Here it is money misery; the Pasha is something like
bankrupt, and no one has had a day's pay these three months, even
pensions of sixty piastres a month (seven shillings) to poor old female
slaves of Mahommed Ali's are stopped.

_August_ 4.--The heat is and has been something fearful: we are all
panting and puffing. I can't think what Palgrave meant about my being
tired of poor old Egypt; I am very happy and comfortable, only I felt
rather weak and poorly this year, and sometimes, I suppose, rather
_wacham_, as the Arabs say, after you and the children. The heat, too,
has made me lazy--it is 110 in the cabin, and 96 at night.

I saw the _Moolid en-Nebbee_ (Festival of the Prophet), and the wonderful
_Doseh_ (treading); it is an awful sight; so many men drunk with
religious ardour. {293} I also went to a Turkish Hareem, where my
darweesh friends sent me; it is just like a tea-party at Hampton Court,
only handsomer, not as to the ladies, but the clothes, furniture and
jewels, and not a bit like the description in Mrs. Lott's most
extraordinary book. Nothing is so clean as a Turkish hareem, the
furniture is Dutch as to cleanliness, and their persons only like
themselves--but oh! how dull and _triste_ it all seemed. One nice lady
said to me, 'If I had a husband and children like the