Autograph letter signed : "Off Roda, on the Nile", to William Angus Knight, 1873 January 2.

Describing his travels in Egypt; saying he is on his way to Thebes where he will spend a week before returning to Cairo; saying "It is usual in ascending the river to take advantage of every favourable wind, as all progress by the oar, the tow rope, or the punting pole, is very laborious in the face of the strong current of the Nile. We reconcile ourselves therefore, to gliding swiftly by the ruins of cities and grottoes of the dead, with the prospect of leisure for examining them bye & bye. Nevertheless their very presence makes one live rather in the past than the present. By the side of the rough implement of three thousand years ago, the steam plough from Leeds looks strangely out of place; and where the oxen treading out the corn, & women grinding at the mill, or filling their water jars, make one feel as though chapters form the Bible were passing before one's eyes, the modern apparatus of steamers and railways is painfully intrusive. This is very much the case with Cairo even - tho' that is modern by the side of Thebes. The present Viceroy is bent on making it a Paris of the East, and is driving French boulevards thro' palaces & mosques and bazaars in the most reckless fashion. I delighted to get away from the bustle of its busy streets, its heaps of ruins & clouds of dust, into the Museum by the river, where the collection, tho' small, is admirably arranged and described by Mr. Mariette; commenting on the religious representations on the mummy cases and "...how completely they were penetrated with the faith of a future life - until one sees how it dominated over everything and regulated the whole of this early existence;" describing the text "... on a funeral tablet more than three thousand years old among 'confessions' of the deceased - 'I have given bread to the hungry, I have given drink to the thirsty, I have given clothes to the naked, I have sheltered the desolate', one sees that the standard of duty was high, and that the 'enthusiasm of humanity' was already rigorous. Who, indeed, can meet without a thrill of wonder and delight such profound anticipations of the Ethics of Christendom?;" describing several statues in the museum; inviting him to write him with his news and giving him his proposed itinerary after the end of January.