We had now been long enough afloat to find out that we had almost always one man on the sick list, and were therefore habitually short of a hand for the navigation of the boat. There never were such fellows for knocking themselves to pieces as our sailors. They were always bruising their feet, wounding their hands, getting sunstrokes, and whitlows, and sprains, and disabling themselves in some way. L----, with her little medicine chest and her roll of lint and bandages, soon had a small but steady practice, and might have been seen about the lower deck most mornings after breakfast, repairing these damaged Alis and Hassans. It was well for them that we carried “an experienced surgeon,” for they were entirely helpless and despondent when hurt, and ignorant of the commonest remedies. Nor is this helplessness confined to natives of the sailor and fellâh class. The provincial proprietors and officials are to the full as ignorant, not only of the uses of such simple things as poultices or wet compresses, but of the most elementary laws of health. Doctors there are none south of Cairo; and such is the general mistrust of state medicine, that when, as in the case of any widely spread epidemic, a medical officer is sent up the river by order of the government, half the people are said to conceal their sick, while the other half reject the remedies prescribed for them. Their trust in the skill of the passing European is, on the other hand, unbounded. Appeals for advice and medicine were constantly being made to us by both rich and poor; and there was something very pathetic in the simple faith with which they accepted any little help we were able to give them. Meanwhile L----’s medical reputation, being confirmed by a few simple cures, rose high among the crew. They called her the hakîm sitt (the doctor-lady); obeyed her directions and swallowed her medicines as reverently as if she were the college of surgeons personified; and showed their gratitude in all kinds of pretty, child-like ways--singing her favorite Arab song as they ran beside her donkey--searching for sculptured fragments whenever there were ruins to be visited--and constantly bringing her little gifts of pebbles and wild flowers. Above Siût, the picturesqueness of the river is confined for the most part to the eastern bank. We have almost always a near range of mountains on the Arabian side, and a more distant chain on the Libyan horizon. Gebel Sheik el Raáineh succeeds to Gebel Abufayda, and is followed in close succession by the cliffs of Gow, of Gebel Sheik el Hereedee, of Gebel Ayserat and Gebel Tûkh--all alike rigid in strongly marked beds of level limestone strata; flat-topped and even, like lines of giant ramparts; and more or less pierced with orifices which we know to be tombs, but which look like loop-holes from a distance.