Our party, consisting of twenty-six persons exclusive of attendants, engaged three of these boats. The Commodore and his family, and, by invitation, ----, and the writer of this, occupied one of them; a second was engaged by a party principally of lieutenants; and a third by midshipmen from the two ships. We had on board of each boat a person called a Cavass, an officer appointed by government to attend on travellers; he goes well armed, and bears in addition, as a badge of office, a long cane capped with silver or gold, to which dangle chains of the same material. His presence places the party under the protection of government, and gives it access to all public places to which he may choose to lead. We were all a happy party on that river. Our steward had laid in abundantly, and provisions along the Nile were plentiful and cheap; we had books and musical instruments, and chessmen and society. We changed back and forward among the boats, and sometimes gave tea-parties; and often landed for a stroll along the river banks, or among the palm-groves of the villages. The officers unanimously voted that it was far preferable to keeping watch on shipboard. Nor must I forget another source of real and actual pleasure, in drinking the Nile water. It is a delicious fluid, and the natives have a saying handed down from father to son, “that if Mahomet had ever tasted the waters of the Nile, he would have placed his Paradise along its banks.” An earthern vessel, that would hold twenty or twenty-five gallons, was lashed at the stern of our boat, and kept filled, so as to allow the sediment to subside. The river, when we were ascending, was about one fourth advanced in the yearly flood, and the waters were of a light yellow color; on being allowed to rest in the jar, they took the color of lemonade, and were the most agreeable we had ever tasted. We drank prodigious quantities, but without having our health at all affected by them. The wind at this season blows constantly up stream during the day, but subsides a little after sunset, when we were obliged to come to and secure ourselves to the shore for the night. Descending boats take advantage of this interval of calm to drop down with the current.