It fairly took your breath away! without that hill no Nile north of Syoot! half Egypt would not have been! No Memphis! Memphis with its wisdom! No Alexandria with its schools! No Cairo with its four thousand mosques! No Pharaohs! No Moses! (The poor devil of a sculptor who drowned himself in his own fountain because he found he had made _his_ Moses too short might have died in his bed.) No Cleopatra! (turn in your grave, noble dust of Antony!)--"forty centuries" would have had no Pyramids from which to look down on the conquering arms of Buonaparte. Mr. Albert Smith's popular entertainment would have been shorn of half its glories! Let me breathe! To what fantastic proportions did that hill grow as one thought of it! Alas! then, for prosaic fact; and oh! for unimaginative maps! On consulting the latter I observed that, by the time it reached Syoot, the Nile had been flowing for nearly two hundred miles in a _north-westerly_ direction, away from the Red Sea rather than towards it; and on visiting the spot I saw, oh confusion! that the hills which bore the responsibility (according to Mariette) of making the history of the world what it is, were on the _western_ bank of the river!--there, at least, or nowhere, for a vast plain closes in on the east. This evening more visitors on board--lemonade and cigars--_pour changer_; Consuls, &c. &c.--tedious. _Monday, 19th._--Left Syoot at six, and arrived at Sohag before three. Suffered a good deal in the morning from spasms of some sort, and was not in a frame of mind to appreciate the scenery. Was, moreover, driven near the verge of exasperation by the steersman (Reis Ali), who droned select passages from the Koran, _sotto voce_, within two yards of my ears from 8 A.M. till 2 P. ditto; the same four bars over and over, for ever and for ever in one unceasing guttural strain. I trust the pious exercise did more for his soul than for my temper. Hosseyn informs me that he is about to buy a lamb, and "make him big sheep." It appears that, during a serious illness three years ago, he vowed a votive sheep to Sitteh Zehneb--the granddaughter of the Prophet--on condition that he should recover. Since then he has put her off (oh, humanity!) with candles and occasional prayer; now, at last, he is going to fulfil his vow. Admire thrift combined with piety, and observe the economy on the _lamb_. Habit is a strange thing! Hosseyn, whose manners have been corrupted by evil communication with Europeans, occasionally attempts to use a _fork_ in the bosom of his family--particularly when salad is put before him. On these occasions his elder brother invariably asks him with grim sarcasm whether he has no fingers. Hosseyn desists at once--"Brabs he beat me!--he big!"