town is situated at the foot of the Libyan Hills, and, seen from a little distance, has a remarkably picturesque appearance, with its surrounding acacia and palm groves, and several graceful minarets rising amidst the verdure. You walk from the river's brink to the town for nearly a mile along a raised causeway, and then find yourself involved in the usual labyrinth of dirty streets and stifling bazaars. There appeared to be a market going on, and quantities of camels and donkeys, with their owners attired in their varied costumes, were picketed round the outskirts of the town, while crowds of merchants, traffickers in produce, vegetable sellers, water and sweetmeat sellers, pilgrims, soldiers, and a profusion of children, made it a matter of considerable difficulty to force one's way onwards.

Accompanied by a friend, I walked through the town to the cliffs, a little way beyond, where are some grotto tombs of no very special interest, excepting in the case of one where a curious procession of soldiers carrying shields is traced on the rock. But the view from the summit of the hills at the back of Sioot is really well worth going to see. You look down upon the irregularly-shaped town, its mosques, minarets, pigeon-houses, and palm groves, with the green fields extending in rich luxuriance till they are met by the broad glistening river on one side and the white limestone mountains on the other. A noble reach of the Nile valley is spread out beyond this, and the distant desert line may be sharply traced where it meets that waving carpet of bright verdure, while life and animation is given to the picture by the bird

like wings of the numerous river craft now filled by a favouring breeze.

At Sioot great quantities of different sorts of pottery manufactures are produced, many of the articles being characterised by much taste and elegance of design. The cups and saucers, water-decanters, candlesticks, drinking-vessels, and such like, are really tempting to a lover of fictile ware; but the worst of it is the great difficulty in transmitting them unbroken to England. Through the kindness of a Scotch friend, who was despatching several considerable packages to the Clyde, I was enabled to forward a few of my purchases, and they arrived absolutely intact. Besides the above articles which our steamer party was importuned to select by many itinerant vendors, we were besieged by a perfect regiment of sellers of other Egyptian ornaments: fans, daggers, turquoises, necklaces, silver nose-rings and earrings, and similar trinkets, who succeeded in doing a fair amount of business.

I visited, on our downward voyage, a large school, 'located,' to use a favourite Transatlantic phrase, in an ugly but extensive white building of a substantial character close to the river side. The rooms are spacious and lofty; and the desks, forms, great black-board, with mathematical diagrams on it, the school maps, and other educational paraphernalia, gave quite a European aspect to the establishment. The school-books were printed partly in Arabic, partly in French, on the same page; and I observed a history of Egypt in the language of la belle France. Upstairs

there were several large dormitories, excellent airy rooms, with good glass windows, and a double row of clean-looking iron bedsteads to accommodate the slumbering forms of the interesting Egyptian youths who, at that particular moment, were enjoying their brief relaxation in the playground. The young gentlemen in question, who doubtless were the sons of prosperous merchants and officials about Cairo, wore a sort of military uniform. Some were dressed in red trousers with a stripe down the side, and a black coat studded over with brass buttons, while the unmentionable habiliments of others were of duck material; but all wore the universal red tarboosh, or fez cap.

Leaving Sioot, with its red pottery, dirt, and teeming population, the next place of any size that we passed was the town of Akhmin, once a large and ancient city of Thebes. It is now little better than a village, whose most conspicuous feature is a number of exceedingly neatly constructed pigeonhouses, carefully whitewashed, and apparently tenanted to an alarming extent. The character of the river banks here is very similar to what it has been for the last two days, but this district is specially rich in varieties of birds of all descriptions that cover each rounded mudbank or flat reach of shore. Herons, flamingoes, geese, ibises, pigeons, ducks, and a whole catalogue of the feathered creation, disport themselves to the gratification of the sportsman and ornithologist. Innumerable shadoofs were in full work all along this locality; and as no book upon Egypt ever fails to describe this primitive irrigating machine, one can only follow

suit. All that it consists of is a bucket of tough skin hung from a horizontal pole, at the other end of which leverage is gained by a heavy lump of dried mud or stone, which is suspended close to the pole, and the latter is firmly attached at right angles to a stationary crossbar, resting on two upright posts of stout palm wood. Draw down the loaded end of the pole, and up goes the full water-skin, which is then emptied into the irrigating channel. If the bank is steep, three, four, or five sets of shadoofs are placed in position, one above another, so as to raise the water to the requisite level. The one at the river's edge lifts the precious fluid up to a short canal conducting to a pool, which feeds the bucket of a machine higher up the bank, and so on till the field above is reached. Another species of irrigating machine is the sakia, or large water-wheel worked by an ox, a donkey, or, very rarely, a horse. The animal perambulates in a circular space like that of an old-fashioned threshing mill, and so turns a large revolving wheel hung vertically, to which are attached numerous earthenware pots, tied on to a strong rope, and the latter, again, is so fixed to the wheel as to allow sufficient scope for each jar to fill with water out of the deep well below. The jars, as the wheel revolves, are emptied into a short conduit, communicating with the main channel of irrigation. These sakias, which are almost always stationed at some distance from the river, keep up an incessant groaning, creaking, monotonous sound, unlike almost any other machinery music, if one may so style it.

The town of Girgeh and the deeply interesting ruins of Abydus, one of the most famous ancient Egyptian cities, were passed by us on our upward voyage unvisited; and about 3 o'clock P.M., on January 28, we met, on her return to Cairo, the passenger steamer which left Boulac the 9th of this month. She lay off the village of Bellianeh, to enable her passengers to visit the temples situated some five or six miles from the river. I walked from our steamer, which had come to anchor more than a mile higher up the stream, to see a friend whom I expected to fall in with on board the other vessel. It was excessively hot, and you raised sufficient dust in walking along the towing path to add to the discomfort caused by the oppressive atmosphere; consequently, I was rather disgusted to find that I had my walk for nothing. There was a wonderfully beautiful afterglow that evening, and most of our party assembled on deck to see its too-rapidly vanishing glories imperceptibly fading away into the pale, sheeny radiance of the rising moon. It is very difficult to trace the distinction of colouring in those exquisite sky pictures, which seem to attain their acme of beauty about half an hour after sunset. All the horizon nearest the grey mountain outline is suffused with a deep red tinge, and this is delicately graded away through a succession of amber, yellow, violet, blue and pale purple tints into the dark sapphire of the overarching canopy of Heaven.

We lay all night at Farshoot, a place of no particular note, and steamed off at about 7.30 in the morning. The river is confined to a somewhat narrow channel by steep