ou can conceive nothing more interesting and
curious than the conversation of a man learned and intelligent, and
utterly ignorant of all our modern Western science. If I was pleased
with him, he was enchanted with me, and swore by God that I was a Mufti
indeed, and that a man could nowhere spend time so delightfully as in
conversation with me. He said he had been acquainted with two or three
Englishmen who had pleased him much, but that if all Englishwomen were
like me the power must necessarily be in our hands, for that my _akl_
(brain, intellect) was far above that of the men he had known. He
objected to our medicine that it seemed to consist in palliatives, which
he rather scorned, and aimed always at a radical cure. I told him that
if he had studied anatomy he would know that radical cures were difficult
of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or
some European language, and that he had not learned our _Ilm_ (science)
also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult
virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture (consisting of
liquorice, cummin and soda) just as the sun entered a particular house,
and the moon was in some favourable aspect. He praised to me his friend,
a learned Jew of Cairo. I could have fancied myself listening to Abu
Suleyman of Cordova, in the days when we were the barbarians and the
Arabs were the learned race. There is something very winning in the
gentle, dignified manners of all the men of learning I have seen here,
and their homely dress and habits make it still more striking. I longed
to photograph my Sheykh as he sat on the divan pulling MSS. out of his
bosom to read me the words of _El-Hakeem Lokman_, or to overwhelm me with
the authority of some physician whose very name I had never heard.

The hand of the Government is awfully heavy upon us. All this week the
people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because
three hundred and ten men are to go to-morrow to work on the railroad
below Siout. This green corn is, of course, valueless to sell and
unwholesome to eat; so the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to
bitterness at the last moment. From a neighbouring village all the men
are gone, and seven more are wanted to make up the _corvee_. The
population of Luxor is 1,000 males of all ages, so you can guess how many
strong men are left after three hundred and ten are taken.

I don't like to thin