6/10/55 
-5'hero wevty^nunber of ©snaller chambera running laterally and 
backward from the main or entrance oharaberi scsce manifestly unfinished 
when the work was stopped. But those that were finished were at one 
time beautifully decorated, — the characteristic incised carved 
conventional figures and hieroglyphs, with still traces of color 
TOTiaining on the less damaged and disintegrated ones,— an altogether 
worthwhile and impressive sight. But, wly in thunderation do they 
not schedule this place for a daytime stop. It should be a prime 
tourist attraction and the blooming steamer could easily have left 
Waid Haifa a couple of hours earlier. These Egyptians (and Sudanese) 
do an awful lot of what appears to the stranger, unfamiliar with the 
language, -“aimless sitting around. Maybe the climate has something 
to do with it, at least in summer time for It can get as hot as Hades. 
Right now it«8 9h degrees in our little cabin, not so nice androomy 
as on the tJpper White Mle, but a little two bunk cubby-hole with 
no cross ventilation. Oot up this a.ra, to a cool 81i degrees.— it was 
cool and gently breeay. Ibe humidity must be low, forl've never 
experienced a moare balmy, delightful early morning, an|^^ where 
Florida, California or anywhere in the Belgian Congo. But on the 
train ride frcsm Kosti to Khartoum and from Khartoum to Waid Haifa — 
the saints deliver us, the therameter in the shade outside our 
t 
compartment registered 115 degreesl on the hottest of three daysj 
inside with window and door shut and fan going it was 10 degrees 
cooler (less warm I mean). les, the train rid® before and after 
Khartoum frora Kosti to Waidi Haifa was as hot as you can get on the 
Arisona deserts, or should I say in Death Valley, and the scenery 
about as bleak, and parched and dry, and under as pitiless a steely. 
