DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5073#0138
CAIRO.
127
the other, unless caused by the traveller's own fault. But
even the knowledge that we need not enforce the pay-
ment in the end, did not reconcile us to the appearance
of harshness against a fellow-sufferer; and we felt more
disposed to exert ourselves to effect some compensa-
tion for his losses, with which experience had taught us
so well how to sympathise.
But now the case was changed; from what we heard,
Achmet seemed to be restrained within no limits in the
false and injurious stories be was spreading everywhere
about us; we knew him, from his own account, to be pos-
sessed of property in land and cows, unusually large for
one of his class, and we heard now that he had expended
much of this (as well as money begged and borrowed
for the "maintaining of his cause") in bribing the
members of the court from whom he hoped for a
decision in his favour.
Under these circumstances the Consul was so kind as to
step somewhat out of the course which he would have felt
to be right in his public capacity of Consul, as he said, in
consideration of our being ladies alone in a foreign land
and among such a people, and he advised us to leave
Cairo as quickly and as quietly as we could; he assured
us that the final decision of the cause would not be at
all affected in this country by considerations of trutb or
justice, and would probably be protracted to the very
utmost limit that ingenuity could devise, or during
which bribes could be supplied, detaining us thus
prisoners, during many a long month of summer heat,
in Cairo, to the great risk of our health, which had
already suffered much from the shock and subsequent
anxiety.
1 Unfortunately for us, just at this time there was
really no Consul either at Cairo or Alexandria; our ex-
127
the other, unless caused by the traveller's own fault. But
even the knowledge that we need not enforce the pay-
ment in the end, did not reconcile us to the appearance
of harshness against a fellow-sufferer; and we felt more
disposed to exert ourselves to effect some compensa-
tion for his losses, with which experience had taught us
so well how to sympathise.
But now the case was changed; from what we heard,
Achmet seemed to be restrained within no limits in the
false and injurious stories be was spreading everywhere
about us; we knew him, from his own account, to be pos-
sessed of property in land and cows, unusually large for
one of his class, and we heard now that he had expended
much of this (as well as money begged and borrowed
for the "maintaining of his cause") in bribing the
members of the court from whom he hoped for a
decision in his favour.
Under these circumstances the Consul was so kind as to
step somewhat out of the course which he would have felt
to be right in his public capacity of Consul, as he said, in
consideration of our being ladies alone in a foreign land
and among such a people, and he advised us to leave
Cairo as quickly and as quietly as we could; he assured
us that the final decision of the cause would not be at
all affected in this country by considerations of trutb or
justice, and would probably be protracted to the very
utmost limit that ingenuity could devise, or during
which bribes could be supplied, detaining us thus
prisoners, during many a long month of summer heat,
in Cairo, to the great risk of our health, which had
already suffered much from the shock and subsequent
anxiety.
1 Unfortunately for us, just at this time there was
really no Consul either at Cairo or Alexandria; our ex-