When o'er the world we range 'Tis but our climate, not our mind, we change. HORACE.
In the autumn of 1849 Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, who were to spend some months in the East, again proposed that Miss Nightingale should travel with them, and again the offer was gladly accepted. Her sister was delighted. The expedition to Rome had not done what was hoped, but here was a second chance. The sister reported to her friends that "Flo had taken tea with the Bunsens to receive the _dernier mot_ on Egyptology," and that she was going out "laden with learned books." Perhaps Florence would become absorbed in such studies, and adopt a life of gracefully learned leisure. The literary temptation did, it is true, assail Florence, but she put it behind her.
The party started in October, bound for Egypt, where the winter was to be spent. Thence they were to proceed to Athens, where Mr. Bracebridge had property. The return journey in the summer of 1850 was to be made through Germany, and Kaiserswerth was to be visited. Florence, we may surmise, looked forward most to the last stage in the journey. On November 18 the travellers landed at Alexandria. On the 27th they reached Cairo. On December 4 they started in a dahabiah for the Nile voyage. The boat was christened in honour of Florence's sister. "My work," she wrote, "is making the pennant, blue bunting with swallow tail, a Latin red cross upon it, and [Greek: PARTHENOPÊ] in white tape. It has taken all my tape, and a vast amount of stitches, but it will be the finest pennant on the river, and my petticoats will joyfully acknowledge the tribute to sisterly affection, for sisterly affection in tape in Lower Egypt, let me observe, is worth having." They went up the river as far as Ipsambul (Abu-Simbel), a little below Wady Halfy; on the return journey they spent several days at Thebes. The letters which Florence sent home show that Egypt appealed strongly to her imagination. What struck her most was the solemnity of the country. "Nothing ever laughs or plays. Everything is grown up and grown old." The letters are full too of Egyptology; for she had made tables of dynasties, copied plans of temples, and analysed the leading ideas in Egyptian mythology as expounded by the best writers of the time:--
