I must buy him.

I hear sad accounts from the Saeed: the new taxes and the new levies of
soldiers are driving the people to despair and many are running away from
the land, which will no longer feed them after paying all exactions, to
join the Bedaween in the desert, which is just as if our peasantry turned
gipsies. A man from Dishne visited me: the people there want me to
settle in their village and offer me a voluntary _corvee_ if I will buy
land, so many men to work for me two days a month each, I haven't a
conception why. It is a place about fifty miles below Luxor, a large
agricultural village.

Omar's wife Mabrookah came here yesterday, a nice young woman, and the
babies are fine children and very sweet-tempered. She told me that the
lion's head, which I sent down to Alexandria to go to you, was in her
room when a neighbour of hers, who had never had a child, saw it, and at
once conceived. The old image worship survives in the belief, which is
all over Egypt, that the 'Anteeks' (antiques) can cure barrenness.
Mabrookah was of course very smartly dressed, and the reckless way in
which Eastern women treat their fine clothes gives them a grand air,
which no Parisian Duchess could hope to imitate--not that I think it a
virtue mind you, but some vices are genteel.

Last night was a great Sheykh's fete, such drumming and singing, and
ferrying across the river. The Nile is running down unusually fast, and
I think I had better go soon, as the mud of Cairo is not so sweet as the
mud of the upper land.

October 25, 1866: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

OFF BOULAK,
_October_ 25, 1866.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have got all ready, and shall sail on Saturday. My men have baked the
bread, and received their wages to go to Luxor and bring the boat back to
let. It is turning cold, but I feel none the worse for it, though I
shall be glad to go. I've had a dreary, worrying time here, and am tired
of hearing of all the meannesses and wickedness which constitute the _on
dits_ here. Not that I hear much, but there is nothing else. I shall be
best at Luxor now the winter has set in so early. You would laugh at
such winter when one sits out all day under an awning in English summer
clothes, and wants only two blankets at night; but all is comparative
_ici bas_, and I call i