CHAPTER II.

From Assiut by steamer to Assouan Crocodile shooting Abu Simbl Wady Haifa Camels and camel equipment Weight

carried.

I HAD been led to expect beautiful scenery on the

Nile, but anything more uninteresting I never saw.

The river was much broader and infinitely dirtier

than I could have thought ; in fact, if you let the

water in your bath lie for two minutes, there was a

thick deposit of mud at once.

All along the banks were unending forests of

dhurra corn, beans, cotton, and all sorts of native

grain ; no coffee, no sugar, and no tobacco, which

sadly disappointed me, as I was looking forward to

unlimited supplies of these articles for daily consump-

tion. Mud liquid, soft, and hard and green crops,

with distant views of very hot-looking blue and pink

rocks were our daily landscape for eleven days, the