I am busy collecting things that we want to take up the Nile for our house, as we shall then be 450 miles from the nearest shop, and it is rather difficult, as I don't know at all what the house is like. There are so many things that I should like to do and see in Cairo, but I have not time, as we are leaving by the first tourist steamer that goes up the Nile, and I don't like to be out for any length of time, but I did manage a visit to the great native hospital, the Kasr-el-Aini, where I know several of the sisters. It is a very fine place with a very up-to-date theatre; the nurses are all natives (men for the male patients), but they all work under the English sisters. The sisters have a most delightful Home, their dining and drawing rooms are very spacious apartments, and they each have a very large room, which most of them screen off into bed and sitting rooms. There is a special fund which provides a carriage and pair for their use, and they have a very good tennis court in their garden, in which they are "At Home" one day each week, and the Cairo people go to tea with them and to play tennis. I have not told you a word about the native bazaars and all the quaint sights of the Cairo streets, but every one writes about them, and I find them too dazzling to describe. I could sit for hours on the balcony at Shepherd's Hotel just doing nothing but watch the people. Take my advice, and come to see Cairo some day, for it is a most fascinating place, and I am quite loth to leave it. XX 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.