November 14, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon


_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.
CAIRO,
_November_ 14, 1863.

Here I am at last in my old quarters at Thayer's house, after a tiresome
negotiation with the Vice-Consul, who had taken possession and invented
the story of women on the ground-floor. I was a week in Briggs' damp
house, and too ill to write. The morning I arrived at Cairo I was seized
with haemorrhage, and had two days of it; however, since then I am
better. I was very foolish to stay a fortnight in Alexandria.

The passage under the railway-bridge at Tantah (which is only opened once
in two days) was most exciting and pretty. Such a scramble and dash of
boats--two or three hundred at least. Old Zedan, the steersman, slid
under the noses of the big boats with my little _Cangia_ and through the
gates before they were well open, and we saw the rush and confusion
behind us at our ease, and headed the whole fleet for a few miles. Then
we stuck, and Zedan raged; but we got off in an hour and again overtook
and passed all. And then we saw the spectacle of devastation--whole
villages gone, submerged and melted, mud to mud, and the people with
their animals encamped on spits of sand or on the dykes in long rows of
ragged makeshift tents, while we sailed over where they had lived. Cotton
rotting in all directions and the dry tops crackling under the bows of
the boat. When we stopped to buy milk, the poor woman exclaimed: 'Milk!