Mounting our horses at the gates of the rest-house, and accompanied by one policeman, we rode along the glaring river bank to the jimcrack landing-stage, where the little steam-ferry was waiting without a single passenger at this hottest hour of the day. The three horses were led into a clumsy native vessel which was then attached to the ferry and towed across the swollen river to the eastern bank, where it arrived with a bump that sent the horses staggering across the boat. We saddled up and were off well before two o’clock, cantering along the embanked road towards the town of Akhmîm. On either side of the road, and spreading around the town, the floods stretched in a glaring sheet of brown water, beaten into small waves on our left by the hot wind from the north, but smooth upon our right, and alive with millions of tadpoles swimming in the shelter of the embankment. Here and there villages formed islands in the sheet of water; and a few palm-trees rose from the flood at various points like pin flags upon a large war map. Outside these villages the small boys splashed about in the water, having, it would seem, the time of their lives; and as we rode along the straight unsheltered embankment, buffeted by the wind, roasted by the heat arising from the road, and baked by the sun above, our horses jumping about until the perspiration streamed from them and from us, we cast envious eyes at those happy children bathing in the shade of the palms, and omitted to realise for a while that we also were out for our pleasure. At length we clattered over the bridge into the town of Akhmîm, and were swallowed up for a while in the narrow streets and winding alleys, where the sun beat down on us with renewed force, and the dust rose in clouds around us.