It was the 3rd of January. The wheat was about two feet high, and the beans were in flower. The word field would mislead. As we rode on, mile after mile, there appeared to be no divisions of the land, except the limits of the different kinds of grain growing upon it. We crossed two or three large canals by earthen bars, which had been thrown across them. The use of these bars is, as soon as the river begins to sink, to retain the water with which the canals are then full. We also passed several villages. At the first of these our dragoman engaged the services of a stout young fellow, who came to accompany us, provided with a heavy staff, about two inches or a little more in diameter, and five feet in length. The villagers about Abydos have a bad character, and are occasionally troublesome, and this young fellow was to be our escort and guide. We did not ride through any of the villages on our way, for the road was always made to skirt the outside of the walls. At the gate of one we passed, we saw a woman and a lad seated on the ground, playing at a game resembling draughts. The board was marked out on the road, which had also supplied the men, in the form of pieces of camel dirt. The sight gave one a little shock. These poor women, however, spend no small portion of their lives in converting the raw material of this natural product into manufactured fuel, and the whole of their lives in the odour of its smoke. In the open, by the roadside, we saw some rectangular enclosures of about six yards by four. In each of them a family was residing. I supposed they were engaged in watching the crops. As these enclosures consist of nothing but four thin screens, about seven feet high, of wattled reeds, their inmates, if that is an appropriate term, must sleep, wrapped in their burnouses, beneath the stars. The reed fence can only be intended to keep out the wind, the jackals, and the eyes of curious passers-by; but Arabs do not mind exposure at night as long as their heads are wrapped up. I saw, at Assouan and Miniéh, several sleeping in this way, in the open market-place, on their goods. At Suez, being out at dawn, I saw in the Arab town the men sleeping outside their huts on a morning when the mercury had sunk to freezing point. With us Europeans, the first thought is to keep the feet warm. About this extremity of his personal domain the Arab is heedless. His care, like the nigger’s, is for his head—-just as the Esquimaux dog, when sleeping, covers his nostrils with his bushy tail, or the pig buries his snout in the straw, so does the Arab, when he makes himself up for the night, envelope his whole head in some thick wrapper. Is this a consequence of his practice of never having his head uncovered during the day? I suppose they are none the worse for breathing and rebreathing the same air all night, with the exception of the little that may filter through the wrapper.