A wonderful sunset again this evening. The western bank like yesterday was low and brown and green, but, unlike yesterday, it was alive with the sweet clamour of many birds. On the eastern side the long wall of rock which seems to enclose the whole length of the valley of the Nile came flush, or almost flush, to the water's edge; and with what an intense glory it glowed! The great hills seemed clad in burnished armour of gold fringed and girt below with green and dark purple; but the smooth face of the water was like copper, burnished and inlaid with sapphire. I sat in the long gloaming enjoying the soft, warm, supple air, and watching the tints gradually change and die round the sweep of the horizon, and across the immense mirror of the Nile as broad as a lake. It was enchanting to watch the subtle gradations by which the tawny orange trees that glowed like embers in the west, passed through strange golden browns to uncertain gloomy violet, and finally to the hot indigo of the eastern sky where some lingering after-glow still flushed the dusky hills; and still more enchanting to watch the same tones on the unruffled expanse of the water, slightly tempered by its colour and subdued to greater mystery. A solemn peace was over everything. Occasionally a boat drifted slowly past with outspread wings, in colour like an opal or lapis lazuli, and then vanished. It was a thing to remember. I hear an altercation between Ottilio (my Italian waiter) and a stoker who has put down his grease can on one of the Pasha's smartest plates. "O--(adjective)--Madonna! se si può vedere una carogua simile! e se me la rompi pas? costa più di te--sa!" My young dragoman having fastened a hook to a bit of string, and the bit of string to the stern of the steamer, has been waiting some hours for a fish. After the first hour he reasoned with himself, and said: "Brabs (perhaps?) he know!"--then, dolefully, "He come touch the 'ook, and then he go run away!"--_cela c'est vu._ To-morrow to Asyoot. 10-1/2 P.M. Just been on deck again. Dragoman still fishing! He says, "I tink he _won't_." I incline to agree with him.