e
surprised by the immense stacks of exquisite silk rugs; but to the
courteous salesman's offer to show us everything in his place, we were
compelled by lack of time to reply, "Another day." When we arrived at
the more prominent silk bazaars, the ladies wished to buy some light
shawls interwoven with gold thread and table covers embroidered with
silk. They soon found out, however, that, as in the other Oriental
cities, much time would be required for bargaining, and so the shopping
was put off until the sight-seeing was over.

CHAPTER XIV.

LUXOR AND KARNAK.

The Nile party No. 2, consisting of forty-two persons, left Cairo on
Friday morning, March thirteenth, in sleeping cars. The cars were
painted white outside, finished in cherry inside, and divided into
rooms, each room having two comfortable berths and a washstand, and a
passageway along the side of the car. We ate our dinner that evening and
breakfast the following morning in a modern dining car attached to the
train.

At nine o'clock on Saturday morning the train arrived at our
destination, the town of Luxor, about four hundred miles south of Cairo.
The Hotel de Luxor, at which we stayed, was situated in the midst of a
large irrigated garden where palms cast a grateful shade and roses and
lilies bloomed among tropical plants. Within this hotel, built with
thick stone walls and floored with flagstones, the tourists found a
pleasant refuge from the heat when they returned from excursions into
the desert. In its cool dining room, decorated in the old Egyptian style
with figures of gods and goddesses, with lotus blossoms and papyrus
flowers, with hieroglyphics and symbols, painted on frieze, walls, and
window sash, the tourists were waited on by white-robed, white-turbaned,
red-sashed, red-slippered natives.

[Illustration: THE HUGE PROPYLON OR OUTER GATEWAY AT KARNAK.]

The flies were a great pest. They were numerous and annoying, although
we found that they did not bite so hard nor tickle the skin so much as
do the flies in our country. Among the first purchases made by the
tourists in Luxor were fly brushes made of palm fiber or of white
horsehair with wooden handles and loops to attach them to the wrist. It
was amusing to see English, German, and American tourists switching at
the flies with their horsetail brushes while the natives passively
endured the crawling insects. Egyptian mothers in the village permitted
the flies to creep over the babies