CHAPTER VI

EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN
Family matters-Malta and Alexandria-Nile-Korosko-Berber by

desert---Boat to Khartum and White Nile-Bayouda Desert to

Dongola-Wady Halfa and Cairo-Recent visit to Professor Petrie's camp at Abydos

T HE home side of my surroundings has been only slightly alluded to, not that it was of small importance to myself, but because it belonged to a different phase of my life from that with which I am here chiefly concerned. When I had outgrown the tuition of my sister Adele, I led in one sense a solitary life. For though I joined my other two unmarried sisters in their social amusements, I was always treated by them and their companions as a boy, and I felt (luring this time like an only child will) alints.   'I'lluir 'Iffectioll to 111c Was (Icep, So) was

to tllcm, lout it war; hot and could not he reciprocated on equal terms. But I received in full measure the priceless treasure of a home, in which each member knew the essential characteristics, good and bad, of all the others, and who loved each other all the same, and would support him or her through thick and thin. The younger of my brothers, Erasmus, was mostly away; in the first instance in the navy, afterwards in farming his property in Somersetshire,

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