A touching incident occurred at Wady Halfa on 3rd March. The party were at dinner, when the King and Queen took a fancy to a little boy whom they saw watching the torches, which were always fixed in the ground on shore wherever the Royal dahabeah stopped for the night. On being questioned, the child said that his father was dead, his mother had married again, and he had not a friend in the world. He was delighted with the idea of going with the party, and so he was engaged as a pipe cleaner. The only property he had was a white linen shirt and a white cap. Mrs. Grey describes him as an intelligent ugly little boy, not very black, but rather bronzed, and wearing a large silver ring in one ear. Whenever the dahabeah stopped, numbers of natives came down to the bank, mostly children; and at first the Queen used to throw them bread and oranges, but it was discovered that they regarded empty bottles as much more valuable, and for these there was the greatest competition, although in the end they generally agreed to divide the spoil equally in the most good-humoured manner. At one place a little Nubian monkey was presented to Queen Alexandra, and the fortunate donor was presented in return with a double-barrelled English fowling-piece and some money. There were the usual groundings on sand-banks, but nothing else of interest occurred, and the party returned to their old dahabeah on 8th March, having thoroughly enjoyed their expedition to the Second Cataract. After lunch the King and Queen, with Mrs. Grey and Sir Samuel Baker, paid a visit to Lady Duff Gordon in the dahabeah, which she had made entirely her home on account of her health. The return voyage down the Nile began on the following day, and immediately the big steamer stuck fast on the old sand-bank which gave so much trouble on the way up, although the Viceroy had had six hundred people working away in the interval to deepen the channel. No amount of exertion could get the steamer off, and consequently the little steamer was used, and Prince Louis of Battenberg, Sir Samuel Baker, and Lord Carrington had to sleep on deck.