business of wrangling with the reis and dragomans for them, makes himself a postmaster, takes care of their letters and sends them out to the boats, and does all manner of services for them, and lends his house for the infidels to pray in on Sundays when a clergyman is here.  For this he has no remuneration at all, except such presents as the English see fit to make him, and I have seen enough to know that they are neither large nor always gracefully given.  The old fellow at Keneh who has nothing to do gets regular pay, and I think Mustapha ought to have something; he is now old and rather infirm, and has to keep a clerk to help him; and at least, his expenses should be covered.  Please say this to Layard from me as my message to him.  Don’t forget it, please, for Mustapha is a really kind friend to me at all times and in all ways.

February 14th.—­Yesterday we had a dust-storm off the desert.  It made my head heavy and made me feel languid, but did not affect my chest at all.  To-day is a soft gray day; there was a little thunder this morning and a few, very few, drops of rain—­hardly enough for even Herodotus to consider portentous.  My donkey came down last night, and I tried him to-day, and he is very satisfactory though alarmingly small, as the real Egyptian donkey always is; the big ones are from the Hejaz.  But it is wonderful how the little creatures run along under one as easy as possible, and they have no will of their own.  I rode mine out to Karnac and back, and he did not seem to think me at all heavy.  When they are overworked and overgalloped they become bad on the legs and easily fall, and all those for hire are quite stumped up, poor beasts—­they are so willing and docile that everyone overdrives them.

February 19, 1864:  Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.  LUXOR, February 19, 1864.

Dearest Mutter,

I have only time for a few lines to go down by Mr. Strutt and Heathcote’s boat to Cairo.  They are very good specimens and quite recognised as ‘belonging to the higher people,’ because they ’do not make themselves big.’  I received your letter of January 21 with little darling Rainie’s three days ago.

I am better now that the weather is fine again.  We had a whole day’s rain (which Herodotus says is a portent here) and a hurricane from the south worthy of the Cape.  I thought we should have been buried under the drifting sand.  To-day is again heavenly.  I saw Abd-el-Azeez, the chemist in Cairo; he seemed a very good fellow, and was a pupil of my old friend M. Chrevreul, and highly recommended by him.  Here I am out of all European ideas.  The Sheykh-el-Arab (of the Ababdeh tribe), who has a sort of town house here, has invited me out into the desert to the black tents, and I intend to pay a visit with old Mustapha A’gha.  There is a Roman well in his yard with a ghoul in it.  I can’t get the story from Mustapha, who is