_Wednesday, 25th._--Completed my sketches with one exception--a study of my beautiful grey (_hechtgrau_) donkey. Unless I make a study at Sakkara, which is just possible, this will be the end of my work on the Nile. In twenty-two skies which I have painted there is not a vestige of a cloud, such has been the divinely serene weather I have had all along. This evening, indeed, faint, shining flakes of vapour were drawn across the sky, breaking and tempering the last rays of the sun; but by a curious piece of luck they did not appear till I was just giving the last touches to my day's work. Saw a beautiful and original effect at sunset. Just as the sun was about to sink behind the hills, a dahabieh drifted past with its sails spread, and reaching up into the region where the light was still golden, whilst the face of the water was darkened, and the long, low banks were already shadowy and grey, the burning sail was reflected in the night of the river, and looked astonishingly beautiful. It was like the mellow splendour of the rising moon. I delight in seeing the sailors climbing the tall, oblique yards of the Nile boats. Sometimes five or six of them perch on one yard at the same time, looking at a distance like great birds. _Thursday, 26th._--Finished my donkey and started; as I get further north, the weather is much cooler--the mornings and evenings are quite fresh, though not so cold but that I can sketch in the shade an hour after sunrise in summer clothes. The natives, however, seem to take a severe view of the temperature, and leave nothing unmuffled but their mouths, with which they occasionally blow their fingers in the most approved winter fashion. Was more struck than before with Gebel Aboofada--the infinite and strongly marked strata of which it is made up writhe and heave in a very grand and fantastic manner. Some of the Egyptian mountains are ruled like a copy book from head to foot, and are very monotonous. At the foot of Aboofada, I saw, for an instant, my first and last crocodile; a small one. They are very seldom seen from a steamer below the cataracts, as the noise frightens away the few there are. I had looked forward to getting a shot at one, and was a good deal disappointed at finding none up the river. It is curious how rapidly time lends its perspective to the past. Every now and then a boat from the cataracts laden with dates comes floating down the river, and the melancholy chant of the Nubian sailors, as they strain at the oars, already falls on my ear as a sudden memory of an almost distant past--not a month old.