I return from my wandering through the ruins of the royal city, and through the changing thousands of years, which have passed over them, to our fort on the exposed hill of Abd el Qurna. Wilkinson and Hay have done an eminent service to later travellers, who, like ourselves, purpose remaining a long time in Thebes, by the restoration of these inhabitable places. An easy broad way leads windingly from the plain to a spacious court, the left side of which towards the mountain is formed by a long shadowy pillared row; behind this are several inhabitable rooms. At the extremity of the court there is still a single watch-tower, whence the Prussian flag is streaming, and close by it a little house of two stories, the lower of which I myself inhabit. Space, too, is there for the kitchen, the servants, and the donkeys. Incomparably beautiful and attractive is the boundless prospect over the Thebaic plain from the wall of the court, low towards the inside and deep on the outside. Here all that remains of ancient Thebes may be seen, or still better from the battlements of the tower or from the hills immediately behind our house. Before us the magnificent ruins of the Memnonia, from the hill of Qurna on the left, to the high pylones towering over the black ruins of Medînet Habu to the right, then the green region surrounded by the broad Nile, whence on the right the lonely colossi of Amenophis rise; and on the other side of the river the temple groups of Karnak and Luqsor, behind the plain, stretches for several hours to the sharp little undulating outline of the Arabian mountains, over which we see the first rays of the sun gleaming, and pouring a wonderful flood of colours over the valley and rocky desert. I cannot compare this ever-existing prospect with any other in the world; but it reminds me forcibly of the picture, which I had for two years, from the top of the Tarpeian rock, and which comprehended the whole extent of ancient Rome, from the Aventine and the Tiber beneath it to the Quirinal, and thence over the hill to the undulating Campagna, with the beautiful profile, so strikingly like the one here, of the Alvan mount in the back ground. But our glance never turns on the far-reaching prospect without gliding down to the silver waterway with peculiar attention, and following the pointed sails, which may bring us letters or travellers from the north. Winter here, as everywhere else, is a season of sociability. A week never passes in which we do not see several guests. A visitor’s book, which I have opened here for later travellers, and provided with a preface, was dedicated to that use by our own signatures at the new year. Since then more than thirty names have been entered, although the book is only obtainable at our fort, and will only be delivered up to our worthy castellan ’Auad on our departure.