Cairo is the foyer of Egypt. To go to Egypt and not go up the Nile is very much like standing outside of a theater and watching the audience go in, and then waiting until they come out, to glean from their conversation some idea of the play. But the tourists who go up the river see the drama of Egypt with all its wonderful scenery, and they feel far superior to those who waited for them at Shepheard’s. After one month on the river, it is with a very different feeling they come back to the museum at Gizeh and look on the face of Seti and his distinguished son, whom they have tracked from Sakkara to Philæ and back to their tombs in the sun-baked valley at Thebes, where they had hoped to rest in peace, surrounded by all that a first-class mummy requires during its long wait. [Illustration: On the Road to Cairo.] CHAPTER SECOND [Illustration: On the Bank at Komombos.] CHAPTER SECOND [Illustration: Our Christmas Dinner, Esneh, December 23.] SOME Egypt-bound tourists decide to go up the Nile before they buy their tickets at the company’s office in Bowling Green. Others, if they are good sailors, make up their minds before they reach Naples. Some are ill all the way to Port Saïd, and don’t cave. But most travelers are pretty sure to decide one way or the other soon after Mount Etna has been left behind, for the East begins for most people from that moment. If the guide-books fail to persuade you, there is pretty sure to be a fellow-passenger who will. The man who has once seen Upper Egypt does his best to make you dissatisfied with Lower Egypt. He can easily show you that your journey’s end is not Cairo, but, at the very least, the first cataract. This is the shortest distance he will listen to. And after he has your promise to go that far, he tells you of the wonders that can only be seen by going on to the second cataract. My fellow-passenger was an old traveler. Others besides myself fell under the spell of his eloquence; so, before we had been at Shepheard’s a week, we were a party of six, with the steam-dahabiyeh _Nitocris_ chartered for a month, beginning December 12. There were growing plants, rugs, and a piano on her deck, and six state-rooms below. Salem Ghesiri was our dragoman. He spoke [Illustration: Karnak, January 2, 1898.] good English, and knew the river by heart. Before we left, a few days were spent in buying cork hats and sun umbrellas, and by ten o’clock on the morning of the 12th the crew had unloaded the trucks that had brought our belongings down from Shepheard’s, and we had started, with the wind and the current so strong against us that it was all we could do to make six miles an hour against them. On our left were the mud houses of Old Cairo, with ancient quarries in the distance, and on the right, far beyond a forest of slanting masts that belonged to the picturesque ships which lined the bank, were the tops of the pyramids that we were leaving for a month. As evening approached, the