t the bows of our vessel were so much
damaged that she could not be repaired under a delay of some days.
Indeed, it appeared that we had been fortunate in accomplishing our
passage across the river, for if we had foundered midway, not being able
to swim like the amphibious Egyptians, we should probably have been
drowned. It was, however, a relief to me to think that there were no
crocodiles in this part of the Nile.

The birds at this place appeared to be remarkably tame: some gulls, or
waterfowl, hardly troubled themselves to move out of the way when a boat
passed them; while those in the fields went on searching among the crops
for insects close to the labourers, and without any of the alarm shown
by birds in England.

While we were dawdling about in the neighbourhood of the village, one of
the servants, an old Maltese, discovered a boat with ten or twelve oars,
lying in the vicinity. It belonged to the government, and was conveying
two malefactors to Cairo under the guardianship of a kawass, who on
learning our mishap gave us a passage in his boat, and to our great joy
we bid adieu to our silent captain, and were soon rowing at a great
rate, in a fine new canjah, on the way to Cairo. The two prisoners on
board were Jews: one was taken up for cheating, and the other for using
false weights. They were fastened together by the neck, with a chain
about five feet long. One of the two was very restless; they said he had
a good chance of being hanged; and he was always pulling the other
unfortunate Hebrew about with him by the chain, in a manner which
excited the mirth of the sailors, though it must have been anything but
amusing to the person most concerned.

The next day there was a hot wind, and the thermometer stood at 98 deg. in
the shade. The kawass called our attention to a pillar of sand moving
through the air in the desert to the south-east; it had an extraordinary
appearance, and its effect upon a party travelling over those burning
plains would have been terrific. It was evidently caused by a whirlwind,
and men and camels are sometimes suffocated and overwhelmed when they
are met by these columns of dry, heated sand, which stalk through the
deserts like the evil genii of the storm. I have seen them in other
countries, more particularly in Armenia; but this, which I saw on my
first journey up the Nile, was the only moving pillar which I met with
in Egypt or in any of the surrounding deserts. We passed two men fi