At 2 o’clock. We are about to pass Thebes. In front of us to our right, behind the mountain is the Valley of Kings. In front of me to my left is a small boat where men fish. It abuts a large sandy bank which ends with a green line of palm trees. The wind picked up again, we are going faster.

In front of Luxor. I was cleaning up my lens when we sighted Luxor to our left. I climbed on the bedroom roof. The seven columns, the obelisk, the French House - Arabs seated at the water’s edge beside an English cangia boat. The keeper of the French House shouts that there’s a letter for us: a card from baron Anca - we stop. Among the people in front of our boat, a negro, draped like a mummy, all bones and cartilages, dried, with a small dirty “takieh” [hat] on his head; - women bath their feet in the water - a donkey came to drink.

Sunset on Medinet Habou The mountains (on the Medinet Habou side) are a dark indigo - blue superimposed on grey-black with a contrast of wine-red rip cuts in the small valleys. The palm trees are black as ink - the sky red - the Nile looks like a lake of molten steel. When we arrived in front of Thebes, our sailors were playing the tarabouk; Bierg was blowing into his flute; Khalil was dancing with rattlesnakes. They stopped to board.

Enjoying these things, as I was looking at three folds of waves bending behind us under the wind, coming deep inside, I sensed a feeling of solemn happiness towards this spectacle; and I thanked God in my heart to have made me fit to enjoy things that way. I felt fortunate in thought, although I seemed not to be thinking about anything - it was an intimate voluptuousness of my whole being.