I cannot describe to you the misery here now, indeed it is wearisome even to think of:  every day some new tax.  Now every beast; camel, cow, sheep, donkey, horse, is made to pay.  The fellaheen can no longer eat bread, they are living on barley meal, mixed with water and new green stuff, vetches etc., which to people used to good food is terrible, and I see all my acquaintances growing seedy and ragged and anxious.  Yussuf is clear of debt, his religion having kept him from borrowing, but he wants to sell his little slave girl, and has sold his donkey, and he is the best off.  The taxation makes life almost impossible—­100 piastres per feddan, a tax on every crop, on every annual fruit, and again when it is sold in the market; on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt, on the dancing girls.  I wonder I am not tormented for money—­not above three people have tried to beg or borrow.

Thanks for the Westminster epilogue; it always amuses me much.  So Terence was a nigger.  There is no trace of the negro ‘boy’ in his Davus.  My nigger has grown huge, and has developed a voice of thunder.  He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage.  I shall be sorry when Palgrave takes him.  I am tempted to buy Yussuf’s nice little Dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular hareem.  In the boat Achmet is enough under Omar; but in this large dusty house, and with errands to run, and comers and goers to look after, pipes and coffee and the like, it takes two boys to be comfortable.  Mabrook too washes very well.  It is surprising how fast the boys learn, and how well they do their work.  Achmet, who is quite little, would be a perfectly sufficient servant for a man alone; he can cook, wash, clean the rooms, make the beds, do all the table service, knife and plate cleaning, all fairly well, and I believe now he would get along even without Omar’s orders.  Mabrook is slower, but he has the same merit our poor Hassan had, {336} he never forgets what he has been once told to do, and he is clean in his work, though hopelessly dirty as to his clothes.  He cannot get used to them, and takes a roll in the dust, or leans against a dirty wall, oblivious of his clean-washed blue shirt.  Achmet is quicker and more careless, but they both are good boys and very fond of Omar.  ‘Uncle Omar’ is the form of address, though he scolds them pretty severely if they misbehave; and I observe that the high jinks take place chiefly when only I am in the way, and Omar gone to market or to the mosque.  The little rogues have found out that their laughing does not ‘affect my nerves,’ and I am often treated to a share in the joke.  How I wish Rainie could see the children:  they would amuse her.  Yussuf’s girl, ‘Meer en Nezzil,’ is a charming child, and very clever; her emphatic way of explaining everything to me, and her gestures, would delight you.  Her cousin and future husband, age five (she is six), broke the doll