For Christmas we have for the third time selected a palm, this much nicer symbol than our fir, and decked it with little gifts and lights. Our artists, also, celebrated the gay festival in another symbolical manner; and a Christmas manger, carried out in a typical way, and placed at the end of the rock-gallery, with the proper lights, was particularly successful. Among the travellers England, of course, was the most fully represented; the French are less frequent, among whom, however, I must mention the kindly scholar Ampère, who, as he told me, is going to remain several months in the country, in order to improve his Egyptian studies.[102] But German countrymen are also not wanting, and at the end of the year we had the pleasure of seeing the Licentiate Strauss, son of the Court Chaplain at Berlin, enter our dwelling with his cousin Dr. Krafft. We were just about commencing our simple Sunday service, which I myself conduct since the departure of our dear friend and former preacher of the wilderness, Abeken, at Philae. I immediately yielded up to one of the two reverend gentlemen what was much more fitting for them than for me, and, as it happened that we had with us the sermons of both the fathers of our dear guests, one of them was chosen for the day. Almost at the same period, Herr Seufferheld and Dr. Bagge, from Frankfort, visited us, and soon after our friend Dr. Schledehaus, from Alexandria, and also the Austrian painter, Herr Sattler; and when M.M. Strauss and Krafft visited us on their return, they met four other guests, M.M. Tamm, Stamm, and Schwab, and the assessor Von Rohr, of Berlin. Twelve Germans sat at our table to-day, among them nine Prussians. LETTER XXXI. UPON THE RED SEA, BETWEEN GEBEL ZEIT AND TÔR. _Good Friday, March 21, 1845._ Our ship lies motionless on the water, in sight of the distant coast of Tôr, which we hoped to have reached last night. I take pen and paper in hand, to quiet the most dreadful impatience, which is caused by an unbearable calm under a hot sun, in a vessel only intended for packages. On the 20th of February we crossed from Thebes from the west to the east shore from Qurna to Karnak. Here we settled ourselves in some of the rooms of the great temple; as I hoped, however, to travel, if possible, to the peninsula of Sinai, so I restricted myself to the most necessary examination of the monuments, in order to arrange the work during my absence.