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[Page 566]

goats, and all other living creatures that in their myridas [myriads] live upon that soil which each year is renewed by the water of Old Nile, which brings it four thousand miles. Mirabile dictu! The water, of the great river, as it rushes this October under the bridges at Cairo is laden with mud, the residuum of that collected and not deposited at an earlier period on its course. Just think of it, how the stream creeping more & more up the banks on either side, flows rapidly onwards from the Abyssinian Mountains and the f. extensive lakes of Central Africa, to reach its objective in the Mediterranean Sea, in such manner as it has dome each year for more than six thousand of them, and the deposit is as rich today as at any earlier period. Wonderful Old Nile! Marvelous mud! The Nile is Egypt fruitful, all else is dessert. The water brings all that the living creatures desire and carries to the salt sea all that they reject. To take a last glimpse of it in the city of the Cairenes I crossed it twice during the morning, and the train rolled over it once on the way here. When shall I see it again?

General Ford told me this morning that I was the first senior officer, medical I presume he meant, to be sent across the Mediterranean from Egypt, and that I should feel highly honoured, but that it was a reward for work well performed during five months. I thanked him for the assistance he & his staff had

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