you facts only what the people are saying—­in order to show you their feelings.  One most respectable young man sat before me on the floor the other day and told me what he had heard from those who had come up the river.  Horrible tales of the stench of the bodies which are left unburied by the Pasha’s order—­of women big with child ripped open, etc., etc.  ’Thou knowest oh! our Lady, that we are people of peace in this place, and behold now if one madman should come and a few idle fellows go out to the mountain (desert) with him, Effendina will send his soldiers to destroy the place and spoil our poor little girls and hang us—­is that right, oh Lady and Achmet el-Berberi saw Europeans with hats in the steamer with Effendina and the soldiers.  Truly in all the world none are miserable like us Arabs.  The Turks beat us, and the Europeans hate us and say quite right.  By God, we had better lay down our heads in the dust (die) and let the strangers take our land and grow cotton for themselves.  As for me I am tired of this miserable life and of fearing for my poor little girls.’

Mahommed was really eloquent, and when he threw his melayeh over his face and sobbed, I am not ashamed to say that I cried too.  I know very well that Mahommed was not quite wrong in what he says of the Europeans.  I know the cruel old platitudes about governing Orientals by fear which the English pick up like mocking birds from the Turks.  I know all about ‘the stick’ and ‘vigour’ and all that—­but—­’I sit among the people’ and I know too that Mohammed feels just as John Smith or Tom Brown would feel in his place, and that men who were very savage against the rioters in the beginning, are now almost in a humour to rise against the Turks themselves just exactly as free-born Britons might be.  There are even men of the class who have something to lose who express their disgust very freely.

I saw the steamer pass up to Fazoghlou but the prisoners were all below.  The Sheykh of the Abab’deh here has had to send a party of his men to guard them through the desert.  Altogether this year is miserable in Egypt.  I have not once heard the zaghareet.  Every one is anxious and depressed, and I fear hungry, the land is parched from the low Nile, the heat has set in six weeks earlier than usual, the animals are scarecrows for want of food, and now these horrid stories of bloodshed and cruelty and robbery (for the Pasha takes the lands of these villages for his own) have saddened every face.  I think Hajjee Ali is right and that there will be more disturbances.  If there are they will be caused by the cruelty and oppression at Gau and the three neighbouring villages.  From Salamieh, two miles above Luxor, every man woman and child in any degree kin to Achmet et-Tayib has been taken in chains to Keneh and no one here expects to see one of them return alive.  Some are remarkably good men, I hear, and I have heard men say ’if Hajjee Sultan is killed and all his family we will never do a good action any more, for we see it is of no use.’