se
again, and swing with regularity, minute after minute. We steam on round
the next corner and see more of them and yet more again; how many have
we not seen already in the short time we have been on deck? Multiply
that times without number for all the miles we came up by train and
double it to include both banks! Imagination gives way!

[Illustration: A "SHADUF."]

"I can't bear it," says the nice American who was in the train with us
and has now joined us in the trip up to Assouan in one of Cook's
steamers. "It's maddening! Why can't a whole village form a company and
get some sort of machine to work? It would water all their crops in a
tenth of the time."

As he speaks there comes into view something just a little better. At
the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly
round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a
wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which
turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to
touch the water at the bottom. Earthenware jars are strung all round it
like beads on a necklet, and as each pot dips into the water it brings
up its share, and when it reaches the highest point it tips it into a
little channel, where it runs away. This is called a _saddiyeh_. The
wheels groan and creak, the patient beasts turn in their dizzy circle,
and the youngster seated on the wheel prods them with a sharp-pointed
stick when they slacken. At least the water runs away in a continuous
stream at the top, however tiny.

Then the steamer takes a sharp turn, leaves the bank, and careers across
into midstream! We go up on to the top deck and see three dark-skinned
men, warmly wrapped up in brown coats, sitting in a little glasshouse in
the bows and watching earnestly the channel ahead.

This is the _reis_, or captain, with his two assistants. They know every
turn and dip in the river; but the river changes ever, no two days is it
alike as it falls and washes away a bank or deposits sand so as to make
an island where none was before. So the three men watch intently and
steer the boat to this side and that wherever they can find the deepest
channel. The Nile is low for this time of year and caution is necessary;
when there is any doubt as to there being enough water, one of the crew
below handles a long pole, dipping it in to find the bottom and calling
out the depth as he goes.

There are twenty passengers or so on the