found waiting on the breezy hill-tops behind the island of Elephantine, at the head of the Nubian highway. CHAPTER XII THE ALABASTER QUARRIES IN THE WADY ASSIOUT A short expedition into the desert is often successful in dispelling that slack boredom which an Egyptian summer produces in the mind of a lonely man; and on one occasion, when my work carried me into a friend’s district, we decided to try a tonic of this nature. We had come together in the police rest-house at Assiout, and we therefore arranged to visit some alabaster quarries which were said to exist in a desert valley known as the Wady Assiout, some five-and-twenty miles back from the Nile. The rest-house was connected by telephone with the police outpost on the opposite side of the river; and one sweltering noon we sent a sudden message across for camels to be saddled and to await us on that bank in an hour’s time. The journey across the swollen river in a rickety native boat took some considerable time; and as the woodwork was too hot to sit upon, and the garments offered by the sailors in place of cushions too dangerously unclean, we were obliged to stand during the entire voyage, while the sun beat down mercilessly upon our helmets and the glare from the water beat up beneath them. The shade of the palms, therefore, where the camels awaited us, was a pleasant relief, and we were a little inclined to linger over the loading and saddling up. However, by two o’clock we were trotting through the palm groves and along the rough country roads towards the desert. A smart little Bishari tracker, with his rifle at his side and his cartridge-belt across his shoulder, led the way on a lightly built camel; and we followed, lumbering along on heavier mounts. One of these, known as _Abu Rasas_, “the Father of the Bullet,” was a famous old veteran, so called because he was captured by the Dervishes during the war, escaped, and was shot in the stomach in the ensuing chase. A large growth over the region of the wound was then all that remained to tell of the time when he was a “prisoner of the Khalifa.” This camel later, and in his old age, developed a marvellous propensity for jumping, and he used to be put over the fences with extraordinary success, to the delight of assembled crowds.