ber of aliases.
They did not even take the trouble to disguise themselves anew, like Dr.
Fortescue-Langley, on each fresh appearance. They had every one of them
a small whitewashed mosque, with a couple of tall minarets; and around
it spread a number of mud-built cottages, looking more like bee-hives
than human habitations. They had also every one of them a group of
date-palms, overhanging a cluster of mean bare houses; and they all
alike had a picturesque and even imposing air from a distance, but faded
away into indescribable squalor as one got abreast of them. Our progress
was monotonous. At twelve, noon, we would pass Aboo-Teeg, with its
mosque, its palms, its mud-huts, and its camels; then for a couple of
hours we would go on through the midst of a green field on either side,
studded by more mud-huts, and backed up by a range of gray desert
mountains; only to come at 2 P.M., twenty miles higher up, upon
Aboo-Teeg once more, with the same mosque, the same mud-huts, and the
same haughty camels, placidly chewing the same aristocratic cud, but
under the alias of Koos-kam. After a wild hubbub at the quay, we would
leave Koos-kam behind, with its camels still serenely munching
day-before-yesterday's dinner; and twenty miles further on, again,
having passed through the same green plain, backed by the same gray
mountains, we would stop once more at the identical Koos-kam, which this
time absurdly described itself as Tahtah. But whether it was Aboo-Teeg
or Koos-kam or Tahtah or anything else, only the name differed: it was
always the same town, and had always the same camels at precisely the
same stage of the digestive process. It seemed to us immaterial whether
you saw all the Nile or only five miles of it. It was just like
wall-paper. A sample sufficed; the whole was the sample infinitely
repeated.

However, I had my letters to write, and I wrote them valiantly. I
described the various episodes of the complicated digestive process in
the camel in the minutest detail. I gloated over the date-palms, which I
knew in three days as if I had been brought up upon dates. I gave
word-pictures of every individual child, veiled woman, Arab sheikh, and
Coptic priest whom we encountered on the voyage. And I am open to
reprint those conscientious studies of mud-huts and minarets with any
enterprising publisher who will make me an offer.

[Illustration: TOO MUCH NILE.]

Another disillusion weighed upon my soul. Before I went up the N