_Philæ.—Feb._ 9. After repeated applications to the Governor, I have procured at last nine camels and two dromedaries for ourselves. Any complaint of this delay would be unreasonable, otherwise than as a misfortune. Several Turks in the employment of the Pasha have been detained for want of them during this last fortnight; notwithstanding which, from their knowledge of his favour for travellers, they have given me the preference. Our start, however, is at last made. I have been very anxious to leave Assuan, having perceived an increasing disinclination on the part of my artist and servants to undertake the journey. The tales of some Arab merchants have excited among them so much alarm, that all my powers of persuasion and remonstrance were necessary to keep them from defection. They have unfortunately heard the exclamations of some of my old Nubian friends, the Rais of the Cataract and others, when I told them I was going to Shendy. “Wonderful! God is great! but are you not afraid to go into such a hot country, where it rains fire?” It has been no easy task to persuade them that a passage of eight or ten days over a desert, without water, and of twenty days without intermission on the backs of camels, can be an easy undertaking. I hope, for their sakes, we shall not have to suffer much: as to myself, I feel more indifferent. I am going to Meroe; and the idea of the desert, notwithstanding Burckhardt’s, and still more Bruce’s, description of it, does not damp my ardour. _Sail on the Nile.—Feb._ 10. We left Philæ this morning at half past seven, entered into the mountains, and at three o’clock descended again into the valley of the Nile; at a quarter to six, we pitched our tents on the banks of the river. The mountains we have passed are of the same character as at the cataract, chiefly of syenite, the exterior of which is darkened by the sun. The formation consists of the same round blocks, appearing at a distance as disjoined. The place where we are encamped, and indeed all the country we have traversed to-day, is miserably poor. The strip of cultivated land is not an eighth of a mile in breadth. Barley, cotton, and _sherangig_ are all that the country produces. The latter, which forms the chief food of the Nubian, is a hard disagreeable kind of pea, which no culinary art can render palatable to European taste. We have passed several small villages, each containing from ten to twenty houses. This morning we met a troop of cavalry from Khartoun, which had passed the desert, of which they gave us any thing but an encouraging description. They say we shall be ten days in crossing it; and “take care of your water” is their constant advice. The same admonition has been dunned in our ears more than a hundred times since the day that we arrived at Assuan.