made no end of sweet speeches to her.  After dinner she showed the Arabs how ladies curtsey to the Queen in England, and the Abab’deh acted the ceremonial of presentation at the court of Darfour, where you have to rub your nose in the dust at the King’s feet.  Then we went out with lanterns and torches and the Abab’deh did the sword dance for us.  Two men with round shields and great straight swords do it.  One dances a pas seul of challenge and defiance with prodigious leaps and pirouettes and Hah!  Hahs!  Then the other comes and a grand fight ensues.  When the handsome Sheykh Hassan (whom you saw in Cairo) bounded out it really was heroic.  All his attitudes were alike grand and graceful.  They all wanted Sheykh Yussuf to play el-Neboot (single stick) and said he was the best man here at it, but his sister was not long dead and he could not.  Hassan looks forward to Maurice’s coming here to teach him ’the fighting of the English.’  How Maurice would pound him!

On the fourth night I went to tea in Lord Hopetoun’s boat and their sailors gave a grand fantasia excessively like a Christmas pantomime.  One danced like a woman, and there was a regular pantaloon only ’more so,’ and a sort of clown in sheepskin and a pink mask who was duly tumbled about, and who distributed claques freely with a huge wooden spoon.  It was very good fun indeed, though it was quite as well that the ladies did not understand the dialogue, or that part of the dance which made the Maohn roar with laughter.  The Hopetouns had two handsome boats and were living like in May Fair.  I am so used now to our poor shabby life that it makes quite a strange impression on me to see all that splendour—­splendour which a year or two ago I should not even have remarked—­and thus out of ‘my inward consciousness’ (as Germans say), many of the peculiarities and faults of the people of Egypt are explained to me and accounted for.

April 2.—­It is so dreadfully hot and dusty that I shall rather hasten my departure if I can.  The winds seem to have begun, and as all the land which last year was green is now desert and dry the dust is four times as bad.  If I hear that Ross has bought and sent up a dahabieh I will wait for that, if not I will go in three weeks if I can.

April 3, 1865:  Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.  LUXOR, April 3, 1865.

Dearest Mutter,

I have just finished a letter to Alick to go by a steamer to-day.  You will see it, so I will go on with the stories about the riots.  Here is a thing happening within a few weeks and within sixty miles, and already the events assume a legendary character.  Achmet et-Tayib is not dead and where the bullets hit him he shows little marks like burns.  The affair began thus:  A certain Copt had a Muslim slave-girl who could read the Koran and who served him.  He wanted her to be his Hareem and she refused