boat anchored near mine, a very bewitching
Circassian, the former slave of a rich Pasha, now married to a
respectable dragoman, and staying in his boat for a week or two. She is
young and pretty, and very amiable, and we visit each other often and get
on very well indeed. She is a very religious little lady, and was much
relieved when I assured her it was not part of my daily devotions to
curse the Prophet, and revile the noble Koran.

I am extremely glad that the English have given a hearty welcome to the
Ameer el-Moornemeen (Commander of the Faithful); it will have an
excellent effect in all Mussulman countries. A queer little Indian from
Delhi who had been converted to Islam, and spent four years at Mecca
acting as dragoman to his own countrymen, is now settled at Karnac. I
sent for him, and he carne shaking in his shoes. I asked why he was
afraid? 'Oh, perhaps I was angry about something, and he was my _rayah_,
and I might have him beaten.' I cried out at him, 'Ask pardon of God, O
man. How could I beat thee any more than thou couldst beat me? Have we
not laws? and art thou not my brother, and the _rayah_ of our Queen, as I
am and no more?' 'Mashallah!' exclaimed the six or eight fellaheen who
were waiting for physic, in prodigious admiration and wonder; 'and did we
not tell thee that the face of the Sitt brings good fortune and not
calamity and stick?' I found the little Indian had been a hospital
servant in Calcutta, and was practising a little physic on his own
account. So I gave him a few drugs especially for bad eyes, which he
knew a good deal about, and we became very good friends; he was miserable
when I left and would have liked me to have taken him as a volunteer
servant.

I have come to a curious honour. _Ich bin beim lebendigem Leibe
besungen_. Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels
from the desert above Edfou. I asked at last what brought them, and they
told me that a _Shaer_ (bard or poet) had gone about singing my praises,
as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the
Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the
flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (_nooreen_)--my name.
Rather a highflown way of mentioning the 'exhibition' of a black dose.
But we don't feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is
romantic in his talk even about an old woman.

It is no use to talk of the state of things here; al