Lady Hester proceeded to Rosetta--town with this charming name, guarded by its ramparts of red bricks and its groves of palm-trees, from where she intended to ascend the course of the Nile so far as Cairo. She hired two boats, and the wonderful voyage began. Wide, powerful, calm, impressive and deep, it was truly the king of rivers, the river which gives life, the river which saves.... Flotillas of earthen jars tied together by branches followed the current of the stream. _Kanjes_ bearing beehives, piled up in the form of pyramids, descended slowly. They were the bees which had flown to meet the spring, and which, having left two months earlier for the plains of Upper Egypt, where the sainfoin and the clover were already ripening, were now returning with their golden booty towards the Delta. The travellers met innumerable barges with curved prows and rafts laden with big restless oxen. At the villages they revictualled in flour, eggs and poultry. They took their meals on board and the days slipped by like hours. Sometimes the banks were high and the water very low, and curious persons landed to get a view of the land. They returned very quickly towards the boat, disappointed by the sadness and the monotony of the immense plains with their trifling undulations, rebuffed by the hostile reception of the hamlets: mass of mud, huts of loam, labyrinth of alleys where the foot slips in dried camel-dung, headlong flight of the women who hide themselves, squalling of children at the maternal heels, grumbling of fellahs suspecting the tax-gatherers, baying of dogs, putrid odour which rises from beings and things which decomposition lies in wait for. The Arabs say that if Mahomet had tasted the water of the Nile, he would have wished to remain in this world to drink it. But the doctor preserved his preference for the growths of France, nay, even for the resinous wines of Chio. At Boulak the voyage stopped. The harbour was swarming with those tiny donkey-drivers who make such incredible charges. Shaking their saddles with the tall pummels decorated with tassels, mirrors and pendants, waving their glass trinkets, decked out, ornamented, like shrines, their mischievous eyes watching the customer, making ready to rush so soon as they catch sight of a Turkish soldier, whose stern countenance implies an empty purse (an astute trick of their masters!), they hailed in our travellers a fine windfall.