On Thursday morning, 22nd, I started to see the tombs of the kings, leaving the eastern bank and Karnak for my return. It was a lovely morning, and I crossed the Nile before the air had had time to get thoroughly heated. On the other side I found horses, kindly lent me by Mustafa (whose son accompanied me), and donkeys for the rest of the party. There were a good many of us, and we made a very absurd-looking procession--_en tête_, a couple of fine brawny Arabs, one of whom has been the guide to these ruins since Champollion; then Saïd and I on our horses--mine a good-looking chestnut, caparisoned with scarlet finery; behind us, on their respective donkeys, the captain in full uniform holding a large umbrella over his head, Hosseyn in his Arab dress, the French cook in his official white jacket and cap, the Italian waiter with a large handkerchief over his head, and the engineer; further behind, lesser menials and the hamper. I forgot the Turkish Cawass in uniform and armed to the teeth. Hovering round, brandishing water-bottles, was a swarm of Arab boys and girls, in sizes, and of various qualities of chocolate; they were dressed in the most fantastically tattered remnants of dark brown shirts that I ever saw; there was one little monkey of a dull ebony colour turned up with pale blue, whose form was revealed rather than covered by a few incoherent brown shreds of garment, and who was inexpressibly droll from the way in which he cocked his little head demurely on one side with a half-consciousness of insufficient drapery.