The following day the youngster whose beast I was riding to the same place, after having endeavoured to palm off upon me some Brummagem scarabs, took from his bosom a half-fledged dove, and holding it up by its wings said with a merry grin, ‘Deso bono antico.’ Italians abound in Egypt, and many of the natives in the towns have picked up these three Italian words. ‘Bono’ and ‘non bono’ are in universal use. At Thebes, where the rides to the catacombs of the Kings, and in the opposite direction to the tombs of the Queens, are long, and in the hot desert, you will probably be attended, in addition to the donkey-boy, by a girl with a water-jar on her head. The endurance of these little bodies surprises one. The same girl accompanied me two days consecutively, from about 10 A.M. till 4 P.M., running, bare-footed, over the pointed and angular broken stones of the desert, in the blazing sun, keeping up with the donkey, and holding all the time the water-jar on her head with one hand. She had opportunities for resting when we were inspecting tombs, and when we were taking our luncheon. To an European she would have appeared about fourteen years of age, perhaps she was eleven. She would have made a very pretty water-colour figure, with her clear yellow ivory-smooth skin, large liquid black eyes, snow-white teeth, coral lips and necklace of the same; the brown gooleh on her head, and her hand raised to support it. She might have stood for her portrait, either at the moment when, replacing the water-jar on her head with one hand, she was holding out the other, with an imploring smile on her face, for backsheesh; or as, with a grateful and satisfied smile, she was depositing the piastre in her bosom. Her smooth, yellow complexion had in it more of the crocus than of the nut, probably because she had more of old Egyptian than of Arabic blood in her veins, through, perhaps, some sword-converted descendant of those Copts, who had constructed their church in one of the courts of the neighbouring temple-palace of Medinet Habou. As to the water she carried, it had been dipped out of the muddy river, and having been churned all day on her head in the sun, could have possessed no merit beyond that of moistening a parched mouth and throat. As to myself, I had no need of the little body’s water-jar. On these occasions happy is the man whom nature has so compounded, or his manner of life so trained, that he can go a dozen hours together without feeling, or fancying himself, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Those who are always craving for a bottle of beer, and are only made more heated by the draught, are not so much their own masters as they might have been.