NOTHING like agreeable surprises, is there? I ought to be on the broad Atlantic, but am not. Let Miss B—— go without me several days ago. I am going to linger here for several weeks longer. There is the woman for you! I wonder if I can go back to where I left off. What did I tell you? I wish I could recall. But don’t you call my young naval officers “infernal.” I cannot allow that. If only you could have seen and known them, you would go down on your knees to take that back. You cannot even know how sore it makes my heart to think I shall never see them again. Ah! woe is me!

No, I did not, “of course, take a run over to Jerusalem.” Yet two more weeks would have accomplished that. The other two, Miss B—— and her friend, would not even consider it. I could not go alone. But indeed Egypt was enough, had we only stayed long enough. What we had was for me that “first taste of blood that makes the tiger.” Did I not tell you I had found out what it was to be a “lotus-eater?”

No need of anything but sitting still to be borne by that invisible, noiseless steam-power up and down the Nile—that wonderful, mysterious, enchanted stream. How its waters—your warning came too late; I had already quaffed deep and long of it—thank the Lord if that take me back!—slipped away from beneath us; how the banks studded here with its picture-villages built of mud, there with groves of stately palm trees, or yonder with some famous ruins, sped by carrying the enraptured gaze with them into the distances that dimmed and melted into the sky; how the unfolding scenes ahead won it after a time of dreams, revery, ecstasy, to behold great hills gliding towards us with lengthening chains of grottoes hewed out of their solid rock, and wrought and carved into stately monuments for dead kings or their mighty subjects; how the day wore on to sunsets of inexpressible glory, succeeded by intervals of curious grey, and then—the sudden afterglow that made sky, air, water and earth an ethereal commingling of “all the tints that in the colors of the rainbow live and play in the plighted clouds!” Ah! mere existence there was bliss, more than akin, beyond that of lotus-eating. But alas! how to give you any idea of it!

There was a comical side, or else I must have become a slave to the enchantment of such a life. The contact with the natives. They came in swarms the moment the steamer landed, to beg if there was no excursion; with their donkeys to act as “guides” if there was. Here is an instance: We were to go to the rock tombs of Beni-Hassan. At seven in the morning, behold me mounted on a miserable little scrap of a donkey, for which my English saddle even more than myself was a world too large. The road varied from sharp inclines to steep ascents. How was I to stick to my steed, was scarcely queried before I found myself clasped in the dirty arms of my tall Arab and firmly pinioned. No use to squirm. That only made him tighten his embrace. My only comfort was seeing all my sisters in the same plight. I do not know what I did not dread; but certainly hosts to which your Holy Land of “f——s” would have been welcome guests. Once at the tombs, I forgot my terrors. Spacious chambers hollowed out of the solid rock, with ceiling and walls decorated with biographical paintings; all the details of the history of the life of the occupant. And in front those magnificent columns “that have preceded our era, notwithstanding their Doric appearance, by some 3,000 years,” says Mariette Bey. They are perfect Doric style, and imposing as magnificent. One of the pictures is that of a body of emigrants, “the most ancient-known example of the hordes attracted by the proverbial fertility of Egypt.” Its date is 4,800 years ago. Three days and a half at Luxor and Karnak and Thebes. Temples, kings, tombs, palaces, Colossi-obelisks, all carved in intaglios and reliefs, and covered with those brilliant paintings that defy time, weather, everything but the profaning hand of man. I rode to melodious Memnon on a donkey in a shower. Rain in Egypt! And it was afternoon! Bah! how I detest doing the right thing at the wrong time. I thought of you and the letter I meant to have written on that lofty knee. I had my music, though!

All the way to the limit of my trip, Assuan, “ancient Syene,” there was repetition of landings, donkeys, guides, rides and ruins. I never tired. Each had its special attractions. I lived in a daze. Ah! I wish every time I think of them to be back and doing it all over and over again. Yes, when I come, you must listen and look. For I shall have pictures to help me tell their story—those beautiful, sublime monuments of a mighty people and civilization, vanished from the face of the earth these thousands of years ago.

I am growing eager to see that “Venture on the Sea of Literature.” Have I told you I like the title amazingly? I shall be astonished and disgusted if it is not a happy hit. It shall be! Those—

Your friend,
L. G. C.

Paris, February 10, 1883.