_Sunday, 8th._--Sketched. _Monday, 9th._--Ditto. In the evening went out to shoot, but could not get near the pelicans and crows--they see you half a mile off. Returning, against stream, Hosseyn, anxious to be useful, took a _punting pole_ and _rowed_ away with an air of conviction which was worthy of the fly on the coach-wheel in the fable. The heat, though still considerable (greater than with us at midsummer), has diminished within the last few days, and does not inconvenience me as much as it did in sketching. Towards evening, soft autumnal veils of mist rise from the smooth, swift river, and shroud everything in their mysterious folds; to-night the effect was especially striking; a pale golden sun hung in a pale golden mist, tempered so that one could look at it undazzled, and so shorn of its fires that the eastern bank, instead of burning orange, showed only a faint violet flush over its dark-brown ridges. On a dahabieh alongside me an Arab is singing endless strophes of some poem of love and war, accompanied by the thud and jingle of a tambourine; the melody, a wandering, nasal strain, full of turns and runs and triplets, appears to be entirely improvised, and is full of character and melancholy. At the end of each strophe I hear a prolonged, deep groan of approval uttered in a chorus by the audience, rising in pitch after a particularly happy effort of the rhapsodist, whose song begins again and again in mournful gusts like the song of the wind. It is dark; I only hear--don't see--the singer and his listeners.