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precipitous, and very soon we have the gray headed sheik, with his followers, coming to watch over us. Then comes the clatter of cooking and supper, the crew sitting around a large dish and helping themselves with their fingers. We have two or three devout Moslems among our crew who go ashore to pray. The steersman, who wears a turban and white flowing robe, is the pattern of piety. He takes his woollen mantle about him. He steps down to the brink and washes his feet, his hands and his forehead. Then he lays his mantle upon the ground and looks toward Mecca. He stands, and holding his hands in front, with the finger tips touching, makes a low bow, a stately, slow bow, his body bending almost into a right angle. He pauses again, standing erect, murmuring his prayer—that there is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet. He prostrates himself on the earth, kisses it and rising stands erect again. The prostration takes place two or three times; the prayer is over; the faithful Moslem gathers his garments over his shoulders and comes back to the boat and supper. When our dinner is over we have coffee on the deck, where we sit and talk. If we are near a village some of the younger ones go ashore. In a few minutes we know by the barking of the dogs that they have invaded the quiet homes of an Egyptian community. Hassan generally goes along on these expeditions; but the precaution has not been value thus far. The villages are sleepy enough and the villagers as quiet as possible. The children peer you through the straw, the elder ones come clamoring fer backsheesh, and there is sure to be a blind old soul to crave charity in the house of the most merciful God. You pass along through streets not more than a few feet wide, with dogs in the front and rear and dogs barking from the roofs of the low mud huts, thatched with straw.

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One or two of these expeditions generally satisfies even the most enterprising of our party; for Egyptian villages are, as far as I have seen, about the same. While some of us are ashore seeking adventure and the others are clustered on the deck, chatting about friends and home and the incidents of the day. Our sailors gather in a circle and we have Arab music. I cannot claim any knowledge of music, although many of my most pleasant memories are associated with its influence. This music of the Arabs is a school of its own, which I would defy even the genius of Wagner to embody. I have often thought that the spirit of a people is expressed in its music as much as in its literature and laws. The music of our Northern nations always seemed to ring with the sense of strength and victory. I remember how the music of the Southern slaves was a strange contrast to the fiery strains of their masters. There was a low, plaintive key in it that spoke of sadness, despair, degradation, that was more a moan and cry than a harmony. I fancied I heard the same plaintive cry in the music of the Arabs.

There is one thing whose enjoyment never ceases, at least with the writer, the beauty of the atmosphere and the sky. Sleep with me is so coy a dame, not always to be won by the most gentle and patient wooing, that I am alive to all the incidents of the vessel. Before sunrise you hear the ropes released from the shore struggling back to the ship. You see the torches flashing up and down the bank, noting the preparation for departure. I sleep with my cheek almost against the wide window pane, almost on the level of the stream, or if I am weary of dreaming or of seeking for dreams, I have only to open my eyes and see the heavens in all their glory, and stars and constellations-to see them again, as it were, embossed on the dark brown river. You hear the cries of the sailors at their post and answering

cries from the shore, and the boat pulls herself together like a strong man gathering for a race, and we are away. You throw open your window and put your hand in the water, and feel the current play with your fingers with almost the old delight of childhood. The morning comes over the sands, and you watch the deep blue of the night melt into primrose and pearl. The brown sands of the desert become pale again, and the groves of date palms becomes palms in truth, and not the fancies that almost startle you during the night. In the early morning it is cool, and it is noon before the sun asserts its power, and even then it is not a harsh dominion, for we have known no hour as yet when we could not walk up and down the deck in our fall garments without discomfort. Throughout the day there is that same open sky, the same clear atmosphere which makes far distant objects as near as you find them in Colorado. Sometimes you see with wonder in the very heart of the desert grateful streams of water, skirted with palm and sheltered by hills. This is the mirageone of the most frequent phenomena on the Nile. Sometimes a battalion of clouds will come from the east and marshal themselves from horizon to horizon, and the sight is rare, indeed, and you cannot know, you who live in the land of clouds and storm, what beauty they conceal. I am thinking of one sunset which I saw an hour or two ago, before I left our friends on the deck at their coffee, to do a paragraph or so in this wearisome letter. The clouds had been following us all the afternoon, throwing their fleecy canopy over the plains of Thebes. Not ominous, black clouds, big with rain and thunder and bringing awe, but light, trailing clouds, hanging over the heavens like gossamer. There was the desert, coming almost down to the rivergrudging the Nile even the strip of green which marked the line of the telegraph. There was the desert—vast,wide, barren

-with no vestige of life beyond a belated peasant driving his camel, or a flock of birds hurrying as we came. So the clouds were a comfort, and we watched them at their play, grateful for anything that took our thoughts from the scene of endless and irretrievable desolation. Then as the sun went down there came the struggle between coming night and the stern, burning majesty of the eternal monarch of nature. The pearls and grays became crimson and saffron. The sun shot forth his power in a sunburst of light. There were ridges of crimson and gold, luminous and flashing, that it might almost seem to burn and hiss like flames in the forge. Then came the tranquil blue-blue of every shade-every conceivable tint of blue-from that which Murillo threw into the eyes of the wonderstricken Madonna in the supreme moment of her joy, to the deep violet blue, which tells of the passion, the patriotism and the revenge of Judith. The struggle still went on, but the victory was not with the sun, and it only remained for him to die as became a great king. grew dim in the shadows. The flaming tints of crimson and scarlet and gold became brown and dark. The desert flushed with purple-with the purple of wine—and it seemed as if old Egypt's kings spoke from the desert that was once their throne, proclaiming their sovereignty. All that was left was the line of green that had become black, and the glorious sky above, with the glory of conquering night; and about us this land of eternal summer, beautiful even in death-beautiful with the beauty of death.

The palm

CHAPTER XIV.

ARRIVAL AT SIOUT-RECEPTION TO GENERAL GRANTFRIENDS ON THE WAY- DONKEY-RIDING IN THE DESERT A VISIT TO ABYDOS THE BATTLE WITH THE SUN-THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD OF CIVILIZATION THE RUINED CITY-TOMBS AND TEMPLES CENTURIES OLD-HOME AGAIN.

On the morning of the 19th of January, writes our correspondent, that being the third day of our journey, we came to the town of Siout, or Assiout, as some call it. We have a Vice Consul here, and tokens of our coming had been sent, as could be seen by the flags which decorated the bank and the crowd on the shore. Siout is the capital of Upper Egypt, and is a city of 25,000 inhabitants. The city is some distance back from the river, and grew into importance as the depot of much of the caravan trade from Darfour. Upon arriving the Vice Consul and his son came on board and were presented to the General. Congratulations were exchanged, and we offered our friends coffee and cigars in the true Oriental style. The name of our Consul here is Wasif el Hayat.. He is a Syrian and a large landed proprietor. He is a grave elderly person, who spoke only Arabic, but his son had been educated in Beyrout, at the mission schools, and knew English. We all drove to the town. It was over parched fields, through a country that in more favorable years would bloom like a garden. But the Nile is bad this year, and a bad Nile is a calamity second only to a famine in Egypt. We rode into the town and through the bazaars. All the town seemed to know of our coming, for wherever we went crowds swarmed around

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