William Arnold Bromfield
Cairo, November 11th, 1850.
My dear E
I am afraid there will be but little chance of any letter reaching you from me for perhaps four months to come; I have arranged to form one of a party of three to go up the Nile at the end of this week; we propose to pass up at least as high as the second cataract, and should we find it practicable, to ascend the river still higher in Nubia. We calculate on being absent from Cairo three or four months.
My companions are Lieutenant Pengelly, and a young naval friend of his, Mr. Lakes, both on leave of absence for health. We have bargained for an excellent boat, with the owner, an Englishman of the name of Page, who has consented to let us have it at £ 22 per month. We take a crew of eight Arabs, including the cook, and the Reis or captain, a trusty man in Page's employ, who has been up the river at least a dozen times. Our expenses during the voyage, hire of boat, and living included, will be about £ 10 or £ 12 per month, each, which is cheaper than we can live for at this hotel, where the charges are about £15 per month, exclusive of out door expenses. Our boat has just been newly painted and repaired, and made perfectly clean, which might not have been done by an Arab or Egyptian owner; the three cabins are very nicely fitted up with soft divans, glazed windows and Venetian blinds, and there is a small apartment in the stern. We rode down on Saturday to Boulak to inspect it, and were much pleased with its appearance. I expect to be close upon, and most likely within, the tropics before the shortest day, and so escape the cold of Cairo, which every one agrees in saying, is severely felt at mid-winter from the ill construction of the houses, the want of fire places, and the comparatively humid atmosphere. At present the climate is glorious, the cool season has regularly succeeded the unusually protracted heat, and the thermometer is now in my apartment at, or a little under, 70° at 8 a.m., or ten degrees less than it was a week ago, whilst the mornings and evenings are: too cool to be quite pleasant. I find additional bedclothes necessary, and many of the natives have put on their winter garments. Still, the weather is quite warm through the day, fogs and mists arising about sunset, which chill the air, and dispose to colds and coughs. Barring a slight cold in the head, picked up I suppose in the tent at the Pyramids, I am remarkably well, and enjoy the delightful warmth and perpetual sunshine amazingly.
I have made several very agreeable acquaintances in this city; Mr, Leider, of the Church Missionary Society, Mr. Trail, late of the Rhodes Gardens, who is very kind and attentive; Dr. Abbott, a zealous Egyptian antiquary, by whom I was invited to come and dine a la Turc, but which mode of eating a dinner, I never wish to repeat. Mr. Trail introduced me to the reading room of the Egyptian Society, where there is a valuable collection of books relating to Egypt, which I can go and consult at any time. Cairo itself is an endless source of amusement, and I have not yet seen a hundredth part of its interminable lanes, courts, alleys, and picturesque buildings. I have been in three mosques, where ten or fifteen years ago, a christian could hardly have found access without a special firman, and might then have been insulted when he entered; now, things are so altered, that they do not in all the mosques even insist on the infidels taking off their shoes at the entrance, although that is rigorously kept up as respects moslems, in the more especially tidy ones. In most mosques large loose slippers are kept for visitors to put on over their shoes. Two days ago, we went to see the dancing dervishes practise their ludicrous religious ceremonies in their mosques, which they do every Friday. Each moslem who entered scrupulously left his shoes at the door, whilst we, giaours, who formed a large party, were permitted to desecrate the holy pavement with our boots and shoes, and stranger still, two or three unveiled English ladies went with us, and were quietly permitted to take their places with the gentlemen, while not a single native woman was on the floor of the mosque, but they might be seen in numbers peering through the bars of the small windows in the dome upon the devotees and heretics assembled 1 there.
Cairo, November 15th, We are fast getting every! thing ready on board the boat that is to be our floating 1 home for the next three months, and expect to commence our voyage on Wednesday the 20th. We trust to escape the disagreeable, though not intense cold of a Cairene winter. I find sudden changes of temperature here in the mornings and evenings, from 80° to 60°, or lower in the open air, and two days back with a smart shower, succeeded by drizzling mist. Although the Nile water has ceased to disagree with me, I cannot join in the encomiums bestowed on it, as being the most delicious water in the world, for independently of its thickness, it has to me, even when filtered, a sensible taste, which the Alexandria n had not, and which is not improved, either in reality or ideally by transportation in the unsavoury looking skin, (that of the entire animal, the head excepted), in which it is carried to the consumer's premises. Such bottles are usually said to be goat skins, but from the great size of many, I suspect they are as often those of donkeys, if not of other animals, very disgusting looking vehicles for one's daily drink, but use has already reconciled me to the thought that every drop of water I swallow has been in contact with these primitive casks, Cairo is an exceedingly entertaining place, and the absolute certainty of scarcely a day's interruption to the bright sunny weather greatly enhances the enjoyment of perambulating it. The 11th ultimo was the first day that was completely overcast, like a November day at home; the rest were bright and clear, as usual.
If you have not read Lane's " Modern Egyptians," pray do, it is an admirably minute and
correct picture of the Cairenes, so esteemed at least by every one here. Will you set
Wacey to work to procure for me a most admirable lithograph
Believe me, Your affectionate Brother, William Arnold Bromeield.