We may not reach Cairo, however. The Nile is shallow at this season, and already we have scraped the sand more than once. It is a curious river--full of currents and shifting sand--the water getting scantier as you descend. That seemed strange to us until we realize that its entire flow comes from the far interior; that it has no feeding tributaries, while the steady evaporation, the irrigation, and the absorption of these burning sands constitute a heavy drain. It is hard to grasp a condition like that, or what this river means--has always meant--to the dwellers along its shores. Not alone an artery of life, it is life itself--water, food, clothing, cleanliness. They don't take as much advantage of that last blessing as they should--nor of the next to the last. It is true that most of them have some semblance of clothing, but not all of them. In this interior Nile, as we may call the district between Luxor and Cairo, early principles to some extent still prevail. At first we saw boys--donkey-boys and the like--without any perceivable clothing, and more lately we have seen men--brown-skinned muscular creatures loading boats--utterly destitute of wardrobe. Yet, somehow, these things did not shock us--not greatly. They seemed to go with the sun, and the dead blue sky and the other scenery. A good deal depends on surroundings. * * * * * Our stops were not all brief. We put in a full day at Abydos, where there is a splendid temple built by Seti I., and Rameses the Great (of course), and where the donkeys are as poor as they are good in Luxor. Not that they were wretched in appearance, or ill-cared for, but they were a stiff-necked, unwilling breed. Mine had a way of stopping suddenly and facing about toward home. Twice I went over his head during these manoeuvres, which the others thought entertaining. But they had their troubles, too. The distance to the temple was long--eight miles, I should think--and part of the way the road was an embankment several feet high. Some of the donkeys seemed to think it amusing to suddenly decide to go down this embankment and make off over the desert. We were a scattering, disordered cavalcade, and what with the flies and distracting donkey-boys who were perpetually at one's side with "Mister, good donkey--fine donkey--baksheesh, mister," the trip was a memorable one. Once when my donkey, whose name was "Straight Flush" and should have been "Two-spot" got behind the party, I caught my attendant, not only twisting his tail, but biting it. It was a good excursion, on the whole. We had luncheon in the great hall of the temple, and I could not help wondering who had held the first feast in that mighty place where we were holding the last, to date.