The nurse from Assouan has come down to be with him at night, as I have been annexed by a poor lady in the hotel who is desperately ill; she came up from Cairo with a very bad throat, and now that is better, but she is still very ill, and it is not quite clear whether it is typhoid fever or general pyæmia, but I am afraid, whatever it is, her strength cannot hold out much longer. I am with her for all the nights and part of the days, and go backwards and forwards to the house, and get some sleep in just when I can. There has been much excitement here about the rumour of war in the Soudan, and now it is more than rumour, and the troops are being pushed up country as fast as they can. Cook's people are in great trouble, as all their tourists going down to Cairo have had to be turned off the boats at Naghamadi (the present railroad head), and they have to go the rest of the way down by train, while the boats turn back to take the troops up to Assouan. Some regiments are being sent all the way by rail, in spite of the line not being yet finished. The engineers are working day and night. I met one of them just now, who said he was up to his eyes in work, and that he had twenty telegrams in his pocket, all different orders, and each contradicting the one before; so I said I supposed he did what he thought was right and hoped for the best! They have been busy here with an old tub of a steamer that has been used for years as a landing stage; with much tinkering at last they got the engines to work, and now she has gone wobbling down the Nile to bring up stores. It was exciting when they first lit up the fires, as I hear she ran away and knocked pieces out of the road on the front. The Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire Regiments have gone past, the men packed like sardines in the boats. I badly want to go up with them, but at present they don't seem to be sending any sisters, and my work is cut out for me here just at present. All the steamers that come up, besides being heavily loaded, are towing large barges with either men or stores in them, so there is a good deal of delay about our mails, &c. I expect you hear more of what is going on at the front than we do, as all the wires are blocked with service messages, and we hear only rumours; to-day we hear our troops have had a bad smash up near Berber, and that they have lost a gunboat, but whether there is any truth in it or not is very doubtful. To-day the Camerons are passing through here, and the natives are much excited at the kilts. I think they rather imagine that England has run out of men and has begun to send the women!