Morning did come at last; and as the sun began to throw its welcome beams over the landscape, if landscape it may be called, the banks of mud bordering the canal grew higher, and receded on either side, until presently we found ourselves in a kind of basin, and soon after amid a multitude of boats. We had arrived at its termination. Casting our eyes on the left bank, where there seemed to be something in motion, we were able, by and by, to detect a village stuck into its side; the houses, or rather the single small chamber forming each house, being made partly by digging into the bank, and partly by building up a low wall of mud, with an opening in its front for a door. They were covered with reeds, and these again with mud. Creeping in and out, were a swarm of natives, in soiled habiliments, as dark looking as the houses themselves. This, together with some store-houses of the Pasha at the gate of the canal, and a few more decent dwellings on the banks of the river, form the village of Atf. On the right bank of the canal was a well paved quay, lined with boats, and covered with heaps of grain. We ascended the steep, high banks on the right of this quay,--and had before us the Nile. I believe we shall not soon forget the impression it made on us; for it is, there, a beautiful river, and its effect was heightened by contrast with the dull, monotonous scene presented by the black sides of the canal and the deserted country around. The Nile is about as wide as the Connecticut at Hartford or the Ohio at Cincinnati; it flowed here at our feet in graceful and beautiful curves. In front of us was an island, low and flat, but covered with millet, and with shrubs and plants of the most intense verdure. A little higher up, on the opposite bank, from amid a mass of houses, towered the domes and picturesque minarets of Atfour, a city of 40,000 inhabitants, with a large building like a palace at its upper edge. Just above this was another island covered with trees, which were dipping their foliage into the waters, and behind which the river was lost to our sight. On our own side the view was less interesting. Only a few trees dotted the banks, and in the interior, the dreary stretch of flat, waste land was interrupted only by the deceitful _mirage_ or imitation of water.