and
joyous smoke. On one side is a row of hotels and shops, all European in
character--hairdressers, perfumers, and numerous dark rooms for the use
of the many amateur photographers, who make a point of taking away
with them photographs of their travelling companions grouped tastefully
before some celebrated hypogeum.

And then numerous cafes, where the whisky is of excellent quality. And,
I ought to add, in justice to the result of the _Entente Cordiale_, you
may see there, too, aligned in considerable quantities on the shelves,
the products of those great French philanthropists, to whom indeed our
generation does not render sufficient homage for all the good they have
done to its stomach and its head. The reader will guess that I have
named Pernod, Picon and Cusenier.

It may be indeed that the honest fellahs and Nubians of the
neighbourhood, so sober a little while ago, are apt to abuse these
tonics a little. But that is the effect of novelty, and will pass. And
anyhow, amongst us Europeans, there is no need to conceal the fact--for
we do not all make use of it involuntarily?--that alcoholism is a
powerful auxiliary in the propagation of our ideas, and that the dealer
in wines and spirits constitutes a valuable vanguard pioneer for our
Western civilisation. Races, insensibly depressed by the abuse of our
"appetisers," become more supple, more easy to lead in the true path of
progress and liberty.

On this quay of Assouan, so carefully levelled, defiles briskly a
continual stream of fair travellers ravishingly dressed as only those
know how who have made a tour with Cook & Son (Egypt Ltd.). And along
the Nile, in the shade of the young trees, planted with the utmost
nicety and precision, the flower-beds and straight-cut turf are
protected efficaciously by means of wire-netting against certain acts of
forgetfulness to which dogs, alas, are only too much addicted.

Here, too, everything is ticketed, everything has its number: the
donkeys, the donkey-drivers, the stations even where they are allowed to
stand--"Stand for six donkeys, stand for ten, etc." Some very handsome
camels, fitted with riding saddles, wait also in their respective places
and a number of Cook ladies, meticulous on the point of local colour,
even when it is merely a question of making some purchases in the town,
readily mount for some moments one or other of these "ships of the
desert."

And at every fifty yards a policeman, still Egyptian in