of us since the day he handed in his resignation. Suppose he has gone
back to England in the sulks.

_Monday Night:_ I am writing in my tent, which is to be shared with
Anthony when he arrives. I feel years older than when we started this
morning. Middle age seems to have overtaken me. If I keep on at this
rate, shall be a centenarian by the time we get back to Cairo.

We made a splendid caravan at the start. Besides the train of camels
ridden by my party from the _Candace_ and Monny Gilder with her
satellites (it goes against the grain, though, to call a bright
particular star like Biddy a satellite), there were over thirty
gigantic beasts laden with our numerous bedroom, kitchen, luncheon, and
dinner-tents, tent-pegs, cooking-stove, food for humans, fodder for
animals, casks of water, mattresses, folding-beds, other tent
furniture, tourists' luggage, and so on. I was happy till after the
baggage-train had got away, each camel with its head roped to the tail
of the one ahead, all trailing off toward the distant Pyramids of
Sakkhara well in advance of us. Each camel looked like a house-moving.
On top of the kitchen-camel's load was perched the chef, a singularly
withered old gentleman with black and blue complexion, clad in a vague,
flying blanket. (Has been Turkish-coffee man in Paris hotels.) Many
other negroid persons in white with large turbans; a few cafe au lait
Arabs; these all counted beforehand by Slaney, for me, and identified
as assistant-cooks, waiters, bed-makers, and camel-men, enough
apparently to stock a village. But we had one surprise at the moment of
starting in the form of a bright black child, clad in white, with a
white skull cap and a flat profile evidently copied from the Sphinx. I
don't know yet why this Baby Sphinx has come or who he is; but he rode
on the kitchen-camel's tail, hanging on by the bread (our bread!) which