14 Home Life at Sheykh Obeyd [1889 



fortable already in an Oriental way. The house is merely the old 

 gardener's house with two rooms added, four in all, and an open 

 salamlik, which I use as sitting room. I have had the floors covered 

 with two inches of clean white sand after the Nejd fashion, and I 

 spread my carpet over it and sit there. For more furniture I have had 

 in a man from the village to make bedsteads, divans, and seats (gufass) 

 which he does out of our own palm branches newly cut at the rate of 

 four shillings, two shillings, and seven pence halfpenny a piece. The 

 village carpenter has put up a few screens for more privacy, and the 

 whole furnishing for the family will cost about two pounds. My room 

 is like a lantern with windows facing East, North, and West, and from 

 my bed I can see the first glimmer of the false dawn, which makes the 

 owls hoot and the jackals cry. Then, with the real dawn, crows begin 

 to pass overhead, and I get up and go outside the garden wall where 

 I sit at the desert's edge and wait for the sunrise. At this hour one 

 sees all the wild life of the place, foxes, ichneumons (nims), jackals, 

 and birds in great variety, kites, kestrels, doves, and occasionally a 

 woodcock at flight from the marshes to the garden where he would 

 spend the day. There are night ravens, too, which have their home 

 in the lebbek trees next the house, and now in winter time a flock of 

 rooks with their attendant jackdaws. This is a rarity in Egypt as 

 rooks are never seen south of Cairo. There are two foxes which live 

 inside the garden, and I see them most days; they sleep generally in 

 the day time behind some cactuses or at the foot of a palm tree, and 

 they often jump up as I walk round, and trot away. They come some- 

 times within a few yards of my feet, being accustomed to the work- 

 people, and not afraid of me because I wear an Arab dress. I have 

 given orders here that there shall be absolute amdn even for wolves, and 

 the hyenas which sometimes make their way over the garden wall. I 

 superintend the labour now, mark out the work, and pay the wages, 

 pruning the trees with a pair of garden nippers. This is a delightful 

 occupation. 



" 20th Jan. — I don't know how sufficiently to describe the delight 

 of the life here. Anne and Judith and Cowie (their maid), have 

 joined me here, and we are idly busy all day long. The whole of the 

 garden (30 acres) has now been weeded and dug twice. The irriga- 

 tion engine has been repaired, and watering will begin regularly next 

 week. Day has gone by like day, each full of interest. This morning 

 we began pulling down an outhouse to clear the land for a new build- 

 ing; thirty men and boys have been working at the job in high good 

 humour, and certainly they are neither lazy nor unintelligent. In the 

 midst of the demolition a large cobra jumped out and put up his hood 

 in the middle of them, but they knocked him over with their picks 

 before he could do any harm. He measured exactly six feet in length, 



