Amelia B. Edwards 
Thousand Miles Up the Nile 

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Un voyage en Egypte, c’est une partie d’anes et une promenade en bateau entremelees de ruines. – Ampere<br><br>Ampere has put Egypt in an epigram. A donkey ride and a boating trip interspersed with ruins does, in fact, sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile traveler. Apropos of these three things – the donkeys, the boat, and the ruins – it may be said that a good English saddle and a comfortable dahabeeyah add very considerably to the pleasure of the journey; and that the more one knows about the past history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins.<br><br>Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and steamers, I am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw one iron dahabeeyah aground upon a sand-bank, where, as we afterward learned, it remained for three weeks. We also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and the first cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old-fashioned wooden dahabeeyah – flat-bottomed, drawing little water, light in hand, and easily poled off when stuck – was the one vessel best constructed for the navigation of the Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of course, involved in this question. The choice between dahabeeyah and steamer is like the choice between trailing with post-horses and traveling by rail.