), and could not; but
he brought his handsome sister, who was richly dressed, and begged me to
visit him and eat of his bread, cheese and milk. Such is the treatment
one finds if one leaves the highroad and the backsheesh-hunting
parasites. There are plenty of 'gentlemen' barefooted and clad in a
shirt and cloak ready to pay attentions which you may return with a civil
look and greeting, and if you offer a cup of coffee and a seat on the
floor you give great pleasure, still more if you eat the dourah and
dates, or bread and sour milk with an appetite.

At Koom Ombo we met a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame snakes.
After a little talk he proposed to initiate me, and so we sat down and
held hands like people marrying. Omar sat behind me and repeated the
words as my 'Wakeel,' then the Rifaee twisted a cobra round our joined
hands and requested me to spit on it, he did the same and I was
pronounced safe and enveloped in snakes. My sailors groaned and Omar
shuddered as the snakes put out their tongues--the darweesh and I smiled
at each other like Roman augurs. I need not say the creatures were
toothless.

It is worth going to Nubia to see the girls. Up to twelve or thirteen
they are neatly dressed in a bead necklace and a leather fringe 4 inches
wide round the loins, and anything so absolutely perfect as their shapes
or so sweetly innocent as their look can't be conceived. My pilot's
little girl came in the dress mentioned before carrying a present of
cooked fish on her head and some fresh eggs; she was four years old and
so _klug_. I gave her a captain's biscuit and some figs, and the little
pet sat with her little legs tucked under her, and ate it so _manierlich_
and was so long over it, and wrapped up some more white biscuit to take
home in a little rag of a veil so carefully. I longed to steal her, she
was such a darling. Two beautiful young Nubian women visited me in my
boat, with hair in little plaits finished off with lumps of yellow clay
burnished like golden tags, soft, deep bronze skins, and lips and eyes
fit for Isis and Hathor. Their very dress and ornaments were the same as
those represented in the tombs, and I felt inclined to ask them how many
thousand years old they were. In their house I sat on an ancient
Egyptian couch with the semicircular head-rest, and drank out of crockery
which looked antique, and they brought a present of dates in a basket
such as you may see in the British Museum.