2 Bird Notes from the Nile. 



from an artist's point of view the glorious 

 colouring is at once the delight and 

 despair of the painter. The broad, 

 shining river, dotted with wing -like 

 w^hite sails and gaily painted craft of 

 all sorts, the splendid cataracts, with 

 their tumbled masses of rocks and 

 boulders, rugged hills, and golden deserts, 

 and vivid green banks, waving slender 

 palms and shady lehek trees, combine 

 to form pictures of ever changing love- 

 liness. Added to all this is a popula- 

 tion at once intensely picturesque and 

 interesting, many of them the living 

 embodiments of those men whose por- 

 traits figure on the walls of the historic 

 buildings. 



And these Egyptians of to-day, living 

 in the ancient land, have much the 

 same manners and customs as their 

 ancestors of the times of the old Pharaohs. 

 The shadouf and the zakeyeh (water- 

 wheel) still groan on the river banks; 

 the women still winnow corn in the 

 wind, and grind it in stone mills; fish 

 are caught in the same kind of nets, 

 and birds are snared in the same shaped 



