FESHN,
_Monday_, _November_ 30, 1862.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have now been enjoying this most delightful way of life for ten days,
and am certainly much better. I begin to eat and sleep again, and cough
less. My crew are a great amusement to me. They are mostly men from
near the first Cataract above Assouan, sleek-skinned, gentle, patient,
merry black fellows. The little black Reis is the very picture of
good-nature and full of fun, 'chaffing' the girls as we pass the
villages, and always smiling. The steersman is of lighter complexion,
also very cheery, but decidedly pious. He prays five times a day and
utters ejaculations to the apostle Rusool continually. He hurt his ankle
on one leg and his instep on the other with a rusty nail, and they
festered. I dressed them with poultices, and then with lint and
strapping, with perfect success, to the great admiration of all hands,
and he announced how much better he felt, 'Alhamdulillah,
kieth-el-hairack khateer ya Sitti' (Praise be to God and thanks without
end O Lady), and everyone echoed, 'kieth-el-hairack khateer.' The most
important person is the 'weled'--boy--Achmet. The most merry, clever,
omnipresent little rascal, with an ugly little pug face, a shape like an
antique Cupid, liberally displayed, and a skin of dark brown velvet. His
voice, shrill and clear, is always heard foremost; he cooks for the crew,
he jumps overboard with the rope and gives advice on all occasions,
grinds the coffee with the end of a stick in a mortar, which he holds
between his feet, and uses the same large stick to walk proudly before
me, brandishing it if I go ashore for a minute, and ordering everybody
out of the way. 'Ya Achmet!' resounds all day whenever anybody wants
anything, and the 'weled' is always ready and able. My favourite is
Osman, a tall, long-limbed black who seems to have stepped out of a
hieroglyphical drawing, shirt, skull-cap and all. He has only those two
garments, and how anyone contrives to look so inconceivably 'neat and
respectable' (as Sally truly remarked) in that costume is a mystery. He
is always at work, always cheerful, but rather silent--in short, the able
seaman and steady, respectable 'hand' _par excellence_. Then we have El
Zankalonee from near Cairo, an old fellow of white complexion and a
valuable person, an inexhaustible teller of stories at