one be ransomed who has been paid for by kind actions and sweet words?’ Then the day broke deep crimson, and I went down and bathed in the Nile, and saw the girls on the island opposite in their summer fashions, consisting of a leathern fringe round their slender hips—­divinely graceful—­bearing huge saucer-shaped baskets of corn on their stately young heads; and I went up and sat at the end of the colonnade looking up into Ethiopia, and dreamed dreams of ’Him who sleeps in Philae,’ until the great Amun Ra kissed my northern face too hotly, and drove me into the temple to breakfast, and coffee, and pipes, and kief.  And in the evening three little naked Nubians rowed us about for two or three hours on the glorious river in a boat made of thousands of bits of wood, each a foot long; and between whiles they jumped overboard and disappeared, and came up on the other side of the boat.  Assouan was full of Turkish soldiers, who came and took away our donkeys, and stared at our faces most irreligiously.  I did not go on shore at Kom Ombos or El Kab, only at Edfou, where we spent the day in the temple; and at Esneh, where we tried to buy sugar, tobacco, etc., and found nothing at all, though Esneh is a chef-lieu, with a Moudir.  It is only in winter that anything is to be got for the travellers.  We had to ask the Nazir in Edfou to order a man to sell us charcoal.  People do without sugar, and smoke green tobacco, and eat beans, etc., etc.  Soon we must do likewise, for our stores are nearly exhausted.

We stopped at El-Moutaneh, and had a good dinner in the Mouniers’ handsome house, and they gave me a loaf of sugar.  Mme. Mounier described Rachel’s stay with them for three months at Luxor, in my house, where they then lived.  She hated it so, that on embarking to leave she turned back and spat on the ground, and cursed the place inhabited by savages, where she had been ennuyee a mort.  Mme. Mounier fully sympathized with her, and thought no femme aimable could live with Arabs, who are not at all galants.  She is Levantine, and, I believe, half Arab herself, but hates the life here, and hates the Muslims.  As I write this I laugh to think of galanterie and Arab in one sentence, and glance at ’my brother’ Yussuf, who is sleeping on a mat, quite overcome with the Simoom (which is blowing) and the fast which he is keeping to-day, as the eve of the Eed-el-Kebir (great festival).  This is the coolest place in the village.  The glass is only 95.5 degrees now (eleven a.m.) in the darkened divan.  The Kadee, and the Maohn, and Yussuf came together to visit me, and when the others left he lay down to sleep.  Omar is sleeping in the passage, and Sally in her room.  I alone don’t sleep—­but the Simoom is terrible.  Arthur runs about all day, sight-seeing and drawing, and does not suffer at all from the heat.  I can’t walk now, as the sand blisters my feet.