return to our boats. We are to
skirt the first cataract of the Nile. We are divided into groups, and
small boats are provided for each party. With fear and trembling we
embark, but confiding in the Arab pilot, who seldom fails in the work
assigned him, we soon regain our equilibrium. To me it was not as
perilous as the descent of Lachine Rapids, in the St. Lawrence River,
nor more exciting. That everlasting wail of Allah! Allah! was kept up
until we landed near our Rameses III, and until we had filled well the
bag with piasters that was handed around. We were not able to disembark.
As I hastened alone to the gang plank of our river home, I saw Mrs. John
A. Logan, whose boat had preceded ours, with her head of crowning glory,
stretched from the low window of her cabin and in her hand was the "Red,
white and blue" unfurled to the Nile zephyrs. I thought of Barbara
Frietchie, and exclaimed: "Take in your flag!" That night there was a
jollification on board, for the day following we were to begin our
descent of the Nile. We took on board many passengers who had gone up on
the previous trip of the Rameses III, and gone beyond to the second and
third cataract and had returned to Assuan for the downward trip. Among
these were the widow of Major General Jed Baxter, of Washington, D. C.,
and also Mrs. Stroud, of Philadelphia. Mrs. Logan brought Mrs. Baxter to
me, and introduced her. "Can this be my Mrs. Baxter?" I said, and she
replied: "And this my Mrs. Hunt, of whom dear Senator Morrill has so
often spoken?"

We were mutually bound together by one common friend, who had, by his
praise, made us friends without ever having met before. We were no
longer strangers. We stopped again at Luxor. There I had time, before
the night shades gathered around us, to call at the hotel Luxor, where a
gentleman with an attack of malarial fever had been transferred on our
upward trip. His wife and daughter I had become much interested in. They
were from the state of Maine, and we had mutual friends. They were glad
to see me again, and were feeling most depressed in their isolation, but
were buoyant with the hope that the husband and father would soon be
able to be taken back to Cairo. They had been able to secure a trained
nurse, and a good physician. I think Luxor is a military post. Many of
the passengers improved the shining hours in revisiting the bazaars and
by moonlight the gay, light-hearted and free among our young folks went
again to s