Having been a privileged class for many generations, the flies are impudent and familiar to a degree. When the white unbeliever, with no conscientious scruples against murder, comes up the river, they swarm about him and buzz into his ears, "Welcome to our city." Then when he begins sparring with them and using sulphurous language, they gather about him in augmented numbers and dodge when he strikes and side step when he slaps himself and seem to think that he is trying to teach them some new kind of a "tag" game. The Mohammedan fly cannot by any effort of the imagination bring himself to believe that a human being would wilfully injure him. This feeling of overconfidence in mankind breeds carelessness, and during the open season for tourists many of them are laid low. Mr. Peasley said that if there was anything in the transmigration theory, he figured that he had massacred a regiment of soldiers, several boards of directors, a high school and an insane asylum. The mortalities during the tourist season do not seem to lower the visible supply or in any way discourage the surviving millions.
When we started up the river a peddler came to the boat and offered us some small fly brooms. They are very much like the brush used by the apprentice in a blacksmith shop to protect the horse that is being shod. The brush part is made of split palm leaves or horsehair and the handle is decorated with beadwork. The idea of a person sitting about and whisking himself with this ornamental duster struck us as being most unusual, not to say idiotic. Before we travelled far up the Nile we had joined the grand army of whiskers. The fly broom is essential. It is needed every eight seconds. At Luxor we went out to see a gymkhana under the auspices of the Luxor Sporting Club and every one of the two hundred spectators sat there wearily slapping himself about the head with the tufted fly brush while looking at the races.
The Luxor Sporting Club is not as dangerous as it sounds. The presiding judge of the races was a minister of the gospel and the receipts were given to local charities. A gymkhana is the last resort of a colony shut off from the metropolitan forms of amusement, and yet it can be made the source of much hilarious fun. Nothing could have been more frivolous than the programme at Luxor, and yet the British spectators seldom gave way to mirth. Doubtless they were laughing inwardly. Several ponderous committees had charge of the arrangements and attended to them with due solemnity.