Pharaoh must have continually thought of the future. His tombs at Thebes show how anxious he was to outlast time. And it seems hard that his carefully prepared plans should have been interfered with. How impressive it would be to find, at the end of the long subterranean passage, the king whose one wish had been to lie there. He must have visited it often before his death. He might have superintended its building and criticized the drawings that decorate its walls. But the sarcophagus is now empty, and its lid is broken, and the king’s new friends have put him in a cheap wooden house; and written [Illustration: At the Races, Khedival Sporting Club.] [Illustration: An Assuan Beggar.] on a piece of cardboard, and tacked on the glass case in which he now lies, is the name he was so fond of cutting in granite. One year more or less makes very little difference to Egypt, but the New Year was properly welcomed aboard the _Nitocris_, for one of us had never seen a January 1 before. So it happened that, even in Egypt, the occasion was treated as a novelty, and the _Nitocris_ once more blossomed out with lanterns, and looked as well that night as her more graceful rivals, the sailing-dahabiyehs, that were anchored above and below us. January 4 was our last day at Luxor. We had ridden up the limestone valley at Thebes to the tombs of the kings, had spent several days and a moonlight night at Karnak. We had said good-by to our donkey-boys. Mine had held an umbrella over me with one hand and had fought natives at the same time with the other, and I hope that some day he will be a dragoman. Before daylight on the 5th we had once more started north, with only five more days on the river left to us. At night we tied to the bank and walked through moon-lighted villages, and did our best to imagine that our journey had only just begun. On the evening of the 7th an extraordinary thing happened. It rained hard enough to make a noise on the awning over us, and in the excitement we almost forgot that there were only three more days between us and Cairo. We had begun to count the hours and to dread that fatal bend in the river that would show us the pyramids at Sakkara, where we were to spend our last night. We passed dahabiyehs with American and English flags flying over them, and we were filled with [Illustration: An Artist in the Mouskie.] envy. Handkerchiefs and parasols were sympathetically waved at us, and at a distance we may have looked cheerful; but it was a forlorn, childish feeling to be taken home because our time was up and our dahabiyeh had another engagement. We felt that all the other boats knew our secret, and we even suspected the crew of having become tired of us and only remaining civil in order to collect the present that they were expecting.