Birds by the Wayside 379 



pears to have been made with a weather-eye out for sand- 

 bars, to avoid which the boats- tie up at night at certain land- 

 ing-places. The longest period that we " were stuck " on a 

 bar was twenty-seven hours ; and I, avidly covetous for every 

 possible minute ashore, was all that time profoundly thank- 

 ful that I was not on shore at Assiut awaiting the boat, where 

 for eleven weeks I had expected that I should join the party 

 with which I was to travel for two months. By a stroke of 

 great good luck for me the time for the run between Bombay 

 and Port Said had been shortened by one day, which enabled 

 me to reach Cairo in time to join the party there. The com- 

 ponent parts of that party had long been a matter for con- 

 jecture. Our conductor was a tall, broad-shouldered Italian, 

 whose gray hat with a black band, visible at the front like 

 the white plume on the helmet of Navarre, led us on through 

 surging crowds from port to port of several Oriental coun- 

 tries. As for the rest of the party — the months were Feb- 

 ruary and March, not the season of our American Thanks- 

 g-iving, yet Miss Smith, the other unattended woman, and I 

 held man}^ a thanksgiving meeting to give thanks because of 

 the congenial qualities of the rest of the party. 



Twenty-seven hours on a sand-bar before a sister ship 

 comes down and drags off the boat may be spent in 

 various ways : there may be the watching of the faithful 

 though fruitless attempt of the crew to get the steamer 

 afloat, or the successful efforts of the crews of smaller crafts, 

 in which the lifting power of broad Nubian backs applied to 

 the underside of the boat, may play an important part. Or 

 there may be by the river's edge the dreary sight of a shadoof 

 in operation, requiring, if the bank be high, its human quota 

 of six men to lift a pail of water to the thirsty land above. 

 But every place may not furnish a strange bird perched on 

 the mud column of an abandoned shadoof. Such a mud pil- 

 lar stood near our halting place and the bird that frequently 

 came to it answered to the description of the female Pale- 

 chested Harrier (Circus pallidus), the only individual of that 

 species seen by me. 



