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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 river— grudging 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 blueblue 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. The palm 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

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ARRIVAL AT SIOUT- -RECEPTION TO GENERAL GRANT· FRIENDS 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.

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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 Bayrout, 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

us, and we had to force our donkeys through masses of Arabs and Egyptians of all ages and conditions, some almost naked-crowds crying for baksheesh or pressing articles of merchandise upon us. The bazaars are narrow covered ways, covered with matting or loose boards, enough

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to break the force of the sun. The stores are little cubby holes of rooms, in front of which the trader sits and calls upon you to buy. As these avenues are not more than six feet wide at best, you can imagine what a time we had in making our progress. The town had some fine houses and mosques, but in the main it was like all towns in Upper Egypt, a collection of mud hovels. We rode beyond the town to the tombs built in the sand and climbed the limestone rock on our donkeys. This was our first evidence of the manner of sepulture in the olden time. These desert rocks of limestone were tunnelled and made into rooms, and here the mummied dead found rest. The

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chambers appointed for them were large and spacious, according to the means of the deceased. In some that we entered there was a chamber, an ante-chamber, and sometimes connecting chambers. There were inscriptions on the walls, but they had been defaced. The early Christians had deemed it their duty to obey the first commandment by removing the representatives of the gods that came in their way. The ceilings of the tombs had been once. decorated, but modern Christians have deemed it their duty to deface them by firing pistol shots. When you visit a tomb and note the blue stars and astronomical forms that the ancients painted with so much care, it is so cunning to try the echo by firing your pistol. Consequently the roofs are spotted with bullet marks. Here also came the wanderers for shelter, and you see what the fires have done. What the tombs may have been in the past, when they came fresh from pious, loving hands, you can imagine. But what with ancient Christian iconoclasts, modern Christian wanderers, Bedouins, Arabs, selling the graves for ornaments, nothing remains but empty limestone rooms filling with sand and a few heiroglyphic memorials on the walls.

We were bidden to an entertainment at the home of Wasif el Hayat, and seven being the hour, we set forth. We were all anxious about our first Arab entertainment, and after some deliberation our naval men concluded to go in their uniforms. The Doctor rode ahead in the carriage with General and Mrs. Grant and the Consul-General. As the Doctor wore his uniform and the others were in plain dress he was welcomed by the awe-stricken Moslems as the King of America. Hadden and the rest of us rode behind on our trusty and well-beloved donkeys, Hadden in uniform, followed by wondering crowds. I suppose he was taken for a minor potentate, as in the Oriental eyes

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