eels
on the bank all day, with the prospect of doing so for a week. The
captain brought H.R.H. of Darfoor to visit me, and to beg me to make him
hear reason about the delay, as I, being English, must know that a
steamer could not go without coals. H.R.H. was a pretty imperious little
nigger about eleven or twelve, dressed in a yellow silk kuftan and a
scarlet burnous, who cut the good old captain short by saying, 'Why, she
is a woman; she can't talk to me.' 'Wallah! wallah! what a way to talk
to English Hareem!' shrieked the captain, who was about to lose his
temper; but I had a happy idea and produced a box of French sweetmeats,
which altered the young Prince's views at once. I asked if he had
brothers. 'Who can count them? they are like mice.' He said that the
Pasha had given him only a few presents, and was evidently not pleased.
Some of his suite are the most formidable-looking wild beasts in human
shape I ever beheld--bulldogs and wild-boars black as ink, red-eyed, and,
ye gods! such jowls and throats and teeth!--others like monkeys, with
arms down to their knees.

The Illyrian Arnouts on board our boat are revoltingly white--like fish
or drowned people, no pink in the tallowy skin at all. There were Greeks
also who left us at Minieh (second large town), and the old Pasha left
this morning at Rodah. The captain at once ordered all my goods into the
cabin he had left and turned out the Turkish Effendi, who wanted to stay
and sleep with us. No impropriety! he said he was an old man and sick,
and my company would be agreeable to him; then he said he was ashamed
before the people to be turned out by an English woman. So I was civil
and begged him to pass the day and to dine with me, and that set all
right, and now after dinner he has gone off quite pleasantly to the
fore-cabin and left me here. I have a stern-cabin, a saloon and an
anteroom here, so we are comfortable enough--only the fleas! Never till
now did I know what fleas could be; even Omar groaned and tossed in his
sleep, and Sally and I woke every ten minutes. Perhaps this cabin may be
better, some fleas may have landed in the beds of the Turks. I send a
dish from my table every day henceforth to the captain; as I take the
place of a Pasha it is part of my dignity to do so; and as I occupy the
kitchen and burn the ship's coals, I may as well let the captain dine a
little at my expense. In the day I go up and sit in his cabin on deck,
and we talk