quite indignant.  ’Why you say it, ma’am? that shame’—­a faux pas in fact.  On the other hand they mention all that belongs to the production of children with perfect satisfaction and pleasure.  A very pleasing, modest and handsome Nubian young woman, wishing to give me the best present she could think of, brought me a mat of her own making, and which had been her marriage-bed.  It was a gift both friendly and honourable, and I treasure it accordingly.  Omar gave me a description of his own marriage, appealing to my sympathy about the distress of absence from his wife.  I intimated that English people were not accustomed to some words and might be shocked, on which he said, ’Of course I not speak of my Hareem to English gentleman, but to good Lady can speak it.’

Good-bye, dear Alick, no, that is improper:  I must say ‘O my Lord’ or ‘Abou Maurice.’

March 7, 1863:  Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.  A FEW MILES BELOW GIRGEH, March 7, 1863.

Dearest Mutter,

I was so glad to find from your letter (which Janet sent me to Thebes by a steamer) that mine from Siout had reached you safely.  First and foremost I am wonderfully better.  In Cairo the winter has been terribly cold and damp, as the Coptic priest told me yesterday at Girgeh.  So I don’t repent the expense of the boat for j’en ai pour mon argent—­I am all the money better and really think of getting well.  Now that I know the ways of this country a little, which Herodotus truly says is like no other, I see that I might have gone and lived at Thebes or at Keneh or Assouan on next to nothing, but then how could I know it?  The English have raised a mirage of false wants and extravagance which the servants of the country of course, some from interest and others from mere ignorance, do their best to keep up.  As soon as I had succeeded in really persuading Omar that I was not as rich as a Pasha and had no wish to be thought so, he immediately turned over a new leaf as to what must be had and said ’Oh, if I could have thought an English lady would have eaten and lived and done the least like Arab people, I might have hired a house at Keneh for you, and we might have gone up in a clean passenger boat, but I thought no English could bear it.’  At Cairo, where we shall be, Inshallaha, on the 19th, Omar will get a lodging and borrow a few mattresses and a table and chair and, as he says, ’keep the money in our pockets instead of giving it to the hotel.’  I hope Alick got my letter from Thebes, and that he told you that I had dined with ’the blameless Ethiopians.’  I have seen all the temples in Nubia and down as far as I have come, and nine of the tombs at Thebes.  Some are wonderfully beautiful—­Abou Simbel, Kalabshee, Room Ombo—­a little temple at El Kab, lovely—­three tombs at Thebes and most of all Abydos; Edfou and Dendera are the most perfect, Edfou quite perfect, but far