Luxor, Upper Egypt,
December 1897.

Once more we have moved our camp, and though we managed the move with very little exertion for my patient, and are now settled in very comfortable quarters here, and he is pleased to be amongst old friends and in his old haunts, and the climate is perfectly beautiful, still it is sad to see that he is going downhill; so it has been arranged for his mother and younger brother to join us here, and we are counting the days till they arrive.

We came up the Nile on Rameses III., the newest of Cook's tourist steamers, a very comfortable boat with nice airy cabins. I took all our baggage on board in Cairo, but we had agreed it was better to avoid the noise and bustle of embarking in Cairo, and that we should join the boat when she anchored a few miles away from Helouan, at a place called Badrachin.

Two of our doctor friends had meant to come to see us safely on board, but at the last moment they were both prevented, so we started off in an arabeyeh, escorted by a policeman mounted on a donkey, who had been sent to give us any help he could.

Much to my anxiety, before we had gone far, the sun had disappeared, and a sand-storm had got up, and by the time we had reached the Nile it was quite cold, and the water was very rough with white waves showing.

Rameses III. was anchored at Sakkarah on the other side of the river, but our policeman rode on and signalled to them, and as soon as they saw us they sent off a boat to take us across; it was rather a perilous trip as the boat was a light one, and we shipped a good deal of water. I was thankful when we got safely on board, and found a good doctor and other friends to help us.

The tourists—of whom there were not many, as this was the first trip of the season—were all away sightseeing at the Sakkarah Pyramids.

Strolling up the river on these steamers is a very pleasant way of travelling. Though the banks of the Nile are flat and there is a certain sameness about them, the lights are so wonderful that they never look the same. I used to think that the only thing that it was really worth while having to get up early for was a day's hunting, but now I must add the sight of the sunrise on the Nile, and as for the sunsets they are simply gorgeous, the intense red, gold, and orange as the sun sinks with the delicate blue above; and then you turn your back on the sun and face the rich indigo blue of the afterglow, and then in a few minutes it is all dark (no twilight here), and there is a solemn hush over everything.

The steamers don't travel at night, and they stop at various points where there are interesting things to be seen, and then all the tourists troop off and mount the excellent donkeys, who seem to think nothing of the heaviest weights, but canter off to the Tombs or the Temples as though they quite enjoyed it.

I had a very good ride on a big donkey called Mahomet to the Tombs of Beni Hassan, and another day I went ashore and had a good look round Assiout.

On the morning of November 23 I had a long ride out to see the Temple of Dinderah (a very beautiful temple), and then the same evening we reached Luxor just at sunset, and walked up an avenue of palm-trees to the hotel, which just at this season is very empty, so we have large rooms on the ground floor, and there is a delightful garden, where at present we spend most of the day. We have a little house just across the road facing the hotel, and I am very busy getting it ready. As I am the only nurse here, if any visitors should come up ill, I should have to look after them; but so far people are behaving nicely.

We have secured two good Arab boys as servants—Hassan and Girgus. Hassan can speak a little English, but Girgus cannot, and it takes a long time to get much work out of people when you can't talk to them! You would be amused to see me wrestling with Arab carpenters, who seem quite incapable of putting anything up straight, and with Arab painters, who never get the same colour for two days together.

The chaplain's wife, who came up the river with us, has gone on to Assouan for a few days, and as she has left me her donkey to use, I get a little exercise every afternoon.

The other day I had rather an amusing time. I had ridden out to Karnak with Miss L. to see the temple: it was very dusty, and we were very hot; and when we got into the shade of the temple we saw a party of people having tea, with two men in very gorgeous uniforms waiting upon them and a dignified dragoman standing by. I recognised the dragoman as one of Cook's men who had helped us in Cairo, and he gave me a sweeping bow as we passed. I said to Miss L. as we moved away, "I am sure that nice dragoman would like to offer us some tea, and I do want some very badly," and we had not gone very far when the dragoman came after us with a visiting card and "Sir G. N.'s compliments, and would the ladies accept a cup of tea?" so we joined the party and had a most pleasant tea, the dragoman having evidently explained who we were.

They had come up on a dahabeah, and were staying only for one night now, but may return later on. They told us they thought they must ride camels in Egypt, so at Keneh they all started off on camels, each with a boy attendant on a donkey, but all except one of the party returned on the donkeys, with the boys on the camels!

The Karnak Temple is very beautiful; I have been to see it several times now, and find something new to gaze at every time I go; once I visited it by moonlight, and then it was most solemn.

There is a very nice little hospital for natives in Luxor, where they do a good many eye and other operations. The native doctor in charge has been most kind in lending me his horse, a perfect little Arab that goes like the wind, and I have had some delightful gallops on the desert.

All the houses in Luxor are built of mud, or mud bricks, the bigger ones being colour-washed over, but often you see a little bit of straw sticking through the colour-wash just to remind you that it is "a house of straw."

We are building a little summer-house out at Karnak, and sometimes drive out there with our lunch and spend the day—the air is fresher away from the village and the cultivated land; and one of the engineers who is building the railway from Cairo to Assouan sometimes lends us his trolley on the line, and a couple of Arabs shove us (with Hassan in attendance) several miles out into the desert. We also do some sailing on the Nile when there is any wind.

Rameses III. stayed here a few days on her way down the river, and most of the passengers came to look us up. One evening they had a fancy dress ball on board. I went down for a little while, and it was such a pretty sight; the boat was moored close in, so that they could dance on deck and then stroll in the hotel grounds, and it was all lit up with Japanese lanterns, and looked so pretty with the palms waving above.

There was a gymkhana one day, and it was very good fun; camel races and buffalo races and all varieties of donkey races; one very amusing race was for gentlemen riding one donkey and driving another with long reins in front of him. The leaders would seldom go straight, and they got hopelessly mixed up in the reins, and had to be disentangled several times.

A favourite amusement here is to play hare and hounds on donkeys. They have quite a big meet of hounds near the hotel, and the hares (three of them) have a long start to give them time to ride out to Karnak, and then they have to try to ride back to the racecourse without being caught.

The hounds are divided into three packs—the fast, the medium, and the slow; the master has to be a man of tact: he sends off with the fast pack the keen young tourists, many of them Americans, the men riding in their shirt sleeves, and they gallop out to the boundary to drive the hares in; then the medium pack trot out in a business-like way, ladies and gentlemen, who are probably very correct in their costume for riding in the Row, and who would not think of riding at home without a top-hat; and, lastly, the slow pack, consisting of people who (in some cases) hardly know a horse from a donkey, and who solemnly jog down to the racecourse and then loiter about to see the fun when the hares come in.

The natives take a great interest in this sport, and call it "hunting the Mahdi," but their sympathies seem to be entirely with the hares, and they give them every assistance by scouting about for the hounds, and secreting the hares and their donkeys in their mud houses when there is danger about.

Dr. R. and I were the hares one day, and we had a most exciting ride, but were caught at last just as we reached the racecourse. At one point I was hustled into a native house (just mud walls with no proper roof), and found a buffalo being milked in one corner and a baby lying on the ground in another, and from there I watched half-a-dozen hounds gallop past, thinking they were close on my heels, and when they got out of sight I doubled off in another direction.

The donkeys seem quite to enter into the fun of the thing, and do their best, but sometimes they get excited and bray—inexcusable behaviour, which is most disconcerting when you are trying to hide in a patch of sugar-cane!

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