DESCENDING THE NILE. 515 For three days after leaving Kenneh, a furious head-wind did its best to beat me back, and in that time we only made sixty miles. I sighed when I thought of the heaps of letters awaiting me in Cairo, and Achmet could not sleep, from the desire of seeing his family once more. He considered himself as one risen from the dead. He had heard in Luxor that his wife was alarmed at his long absence, and that his little son went daily to Boulak to make inquiries among the returning boats. Besides, my eyes were no better. I could not go ashore, as we kept the middle of the stream, and my only employment was to lounge on the outside divan and gossip with the rais. One evening, when the sky was overcast, and the wind whirled through the palm-trees, we saw a boy on the bank crying for his brother, who had started to cross the river but was no longer to be seen. Presently an old man came out to look for him, in a hollow palm-log, which rolled on the rough waves. We feared the boy had been drowned, but not long afterwards came upon him, drifting at the mercy of the current, having broken his oar. By the old man's assistance he got back to the shore in safety.

On the fourth day the wind ceased. The Lotus floated down the stream as lightly as the snowy blossom whose name I gave her. ' "We passed Grirgeh, Ekhmin ; and at noon we brushed the foot of Djebel Shekh Hereedee and reached the landing-place of Tahtah. I had a letter from Kufaa Bey in Khartoum to his family in the latter town, and accordingly walked thither through fields of superb wheat, heavy with ripening ears. Tahtah is a beautiful old town ■ the houses are of burnt brick ; the wood-work shows the same fanciful Saracenic patterns as in Cairo, and the bazaar is as quiet, dim and