without any special channel-running one way to-day, another next day. To know the river, therefore, must be something like knowing the temper of a whimsical woman —you must court and woo her and wait upon her humors. Navigation is a constant seeking after knowledge. We have a captain in a comely uniform, with a clear cut Arab face, who stands in the middle of the boat and shouts. We have two men with poles who lean over the prow and sink their poles in the water, and now and then shout. Then at the wheel we have one, or perhaps two, steersmen, generally fine, grave, swarthy fellows, who do not shout much, but, knowing the river's coquettish ways, do as they please, unmindful of the shouting. For an hour, for two or three hours, we hum along with an easy, trembling motion, the smooth, shining river lapping our sides, and the low, green banks falling behind us. Then we have a tremor, a sidling to one side, and the engines stop. This was so serious a business, especially to our seafaring friends, that for the first or second time they regarded it as a call to quarters or a fire alarm, but we soon became used to it, and running aground hardly interrupted the idlest conversation. When evening comes, our captain picks out the best point that can be found after sunset, and runs up to the land. The crew are sent ashore with torches and hammers, posts are driven into the soft clay and we are tied to the shore. There, as if out of the earth they come, we have a group of Bedouins in their turbans, who gather on the river bank and make a bonfire of dried sugar cane or cornstalks and keep watch over us during the night. The first night we tied up, Mr. Grant, the younger, and your correspondent went ashore, seeking out Hassan to keep us company. There was our group of crouching Arabs over the fire, their dark features lighting up into a strange but not unimpressive kind of beauty. We had

been told-I believe all the books written by our English friends tells us that the only way to extract courtesy from an Oriental is to beat him, trample him, or at least show him the hilt of your dagger or the muzzle of a pistol. The only daggers our party posssess are the honest table knives, which some one of the many Mohammed Alis is at this moment most likely scouring. The only pistols I can trace are General Grant's and my own. The General, however, left his weapon in the bottom of one of his trunks in London, and mine is looked upon as a kind of infernal machine, dangerous to no one but the owner. However, we treat our Arabs with civility, and Hassan supplies them with cigarettes. They wish to stand in our honor, but we insist on their taking all the comfort possible out of their modest, crackling fire. They tell us their names, Mohammed one thing and Mohammed another. They have only one wife each and live in the neighboring village. They have a sheik, and he sent them hither to watch over the hadji. Times are hard with them. The Nile has been bad, and when the Nile is bad, calamity comes and the people go away to other villages. We did not like to talk politics with them because we feared that Hassan, who is an admirer and friend of the Khedive, might limit the tendencies of our inquiries and give only barren answers. They said, however, they would sit over us all night and keep us from harm. I have no doubt they were sound asleep, burrowed near the cinders, long before any one of our party had retired, except, perhaps, the Doctor, whose habits are exemplary, and who sets us an example of early hours.

There can be no more interesting and, I am afraid, perilous experiment than to put ten human beings on a boat for three weeks and bid them enjoy themselves. I looked around the boat with a little curiosity as we came

in and began to adjust ourselves to the conditions of our trip. There are two things that try friendship-getting married and traveling together. You have to dovetail each other, to make and receive compromises. Questions of coffee and tea and chocolate, of breakfast and luncheon, of amusement and conversation, enter into travel. There is the passenger who is never quite well, the passenger whose health is a reflection upon others, the passenger who worries about the engines and the mails, the passenger who cannot stand the sea cooking, and compares every meal with a famous dinner he once enjoyed at Delmonico's. Then there is the exasperating passenger, who contradicts everybody and is ready to wager. Our little party developed none of these eccentricities. So far as the daily and hourly rubbing together was concerned nothing came to mar our harmony. We adjusted ourselves to the General's modes of life; and as those were of the simplest and most considerate character, it involved no sacrifice. We live in a cluster of small rooms around the cabin. My own little room has a window within a few inches of the water. I have only to put out my hand to feel the cooling sense of the stream. It is a wonder how much you can do with a room not much larger than an ordinary sideboard. Clothing and books find rest in odd kinds of places. You sleep with your brushes and combs. In one corner is a little crate of Egyptian crockery which the Marquis induced me to purchase at Sicut, and when I awake at night I wonder how I am ever to carry it over the seas, and what people will say. I do not think that the purchase was a useful one, but it did not cost much, and as everybody seems to be going mad on crockery, may make a reputation as a connoisseur of Egyptian art at a small expense if only the crockery stands the seas. We breakfast whenever we please in the French fashion.

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