e amused by his attendants,
the Darfoor boy will trot after him, as he can shoot and clean guns, tiny
as he is Maurice seems to wish to come and I hope Alexander will let him
spend the winter here, and I will take him up to the second Cataract; I
really think he would enjoy it.

My boat will not return I think for another six weeks. Mr. Eaton and Mr.
Baird were such nice people! their dragoman, a Maltese, appeared to hate
the Italians with ferocity. He said all decent people in Malta would ten
times rather belong to the Mahommedans than to the Italians--after all
blood tells. He was a very respectable young man, and being a dragoman
and the son of a dragoman, he has seen the world, and particularly the
Muslims. I suppose it is the Pope that makes the Italians so hateful to
them.

The post here is dreadful, I would not mind their reading one's letters
if they would only send them on. Omar begs we to say that he and his
children will pray for you all his life, please God, not for the money
only but still more for the good words and the trusting him. But he
says, 'I can't say much _politikeh_, Please God she shall see, only I
kiss her hand now.' You will hear from Janet about her excursion. What
I liked best was shooting the Cataract in a small boat; it was fine
fantasia.

April 19, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_April_ 19, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have been much amused lately by a new acquaintance, who, in romances of
the last century, would be called an 'Arabian sage.' Sheykh Abdurrachman
lives in a village half a day's journey off, and came over to visit me
and to doctor me according to the science of Galen and Avicenna. Fancy a
tall, thin, graceful man, with a grey beard and liquid eyes, absorbed in
studies of the obsolete kind, a doctor of theology, law, medicine and
astronomy. We spent three days in arguing and questioning; I consented
to swallow a potion or two which he made up before me, of very innocent
materials. My friend is neither a quack nor superstitious, and two
hundred years ago would have been a better physician than most in Europe.
Indeed I would rather swallow his physic now than that of many a M.D. I
found him like all the learned theologians I have known, extremely
liberal and tolerant. Y