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Updated: June 19, 2025
There was much of interest in the street, but the ladies soon tired of watching the donkey-boys and smiling at the awkward feats of the camel riders, and turned their attention toward the shops and the architecture; turning finally from mosque and theatre to the more private apartments they were hardly houses with their small, high balconies, their latticed windows, their dark doorways, their sills almost level with the street.
The variety of races which one meets in these contracted passage-ways is curious, represented by faces yellow, bronze, white, and black. Add to all the crowd of donkey-boys, camels, goats, and street peddlers, crying, bleating, blustering, and braying, and you have a modern Babel of sights and sounds such as greet the stranger in the streets of this Moorish capital.
The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus.
Despite the earnest solicitations of the lady patient and various acquaintances staying in Luxor, he had given the order to remove to the western bank of the Nile. There he could be at peace. Friends of his cried out adieux from the road in front of the shops and the great hotel. Unknown donkey-boys saluted. Tourists stood at gaze. He answered and looked back.
"I make it my business to outfit traveling parties, either for business, pleasure or scientific matters. I am, at your service, Val Jacinto," and he introduced himself with another low bow. For a moment Tom and his friends hardly knew how to accept this offer. It might be, as the man had said, that he was a professional tour conductor, like those who have charge of Egyptian donkey-boys and guides.
There they dismounted, and Nigel ordered their donkey-boys to lead the beasts away till they were out of earshot. The dry sound of their tripping feet, over the stones and hard earth which edged the sand near by, soon died down into the twilight, and the Armines were left alone.
It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all the houses seemed empty and forsaken. The sais ran before the Pasha's carriage, the donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train of camels calmly forced its passage through the swirling crowds, supercilious and heavy-laden.
The dowdy "blue stocking" had vanished, and in her place was a girl as attractive in her darkness as Freddy was in his fairness. And so they rode on and on through the Theban hills, bathed in pink sunlight. The donkey-boys had fallen behind. Their first enthusiastic effort to show off before the honourable Sitt had quite subsided. They were discussing her now, in none too delicate a fashion.
But the Judas dolls didn't look the least bit as the real Judas must have looked. Some of them were made to look like Mexican donkey-boys and some like water-carriers, while others represented priests, or policemen, or cowboys. Tita couldn't make up her mind whether to buy a donkey-boy or a policeman. But Tonio found what he wanted right away.
My donkey was so little that they couldn't see him only his ears. Gallegher won. The donkey-boys called it Von Bebey, so I don't think it will help the sale of the book. Today we went to call on the Khedive. It was very informal and too democratic to suit my tastes.
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