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P. S. Any purchases I may make here shall be so arranged that payment may be sent from Detroit about Sept. 1st, after your return from Mackinaw. C.L.F.

THE EGYPTIAN HOTELS LTD.
Shepheard's Hotel
Cairo,July 28th, 1909.

Dear Colonel Hecker,
I arrived here night before last having enjoyed a delightful three day's voyage on the "Schelswig" from Naples. Yesterday morning, I cabled you "Sanctum --- arrived here safely and well, pleasant voyage. Sapience --- detained here. Stuccando - August 5th".

My original plans were to leave Cairo August 2nd and sail for Shanghai on the S.S. "Derfflinger" on the following day from Port Said. But the ship in the English Channel near "The Needles", ran on the rocks about three days behind schedule. Fortunately, the delay will not inconvenience me as Peking wil be reached plenty early enough for me and the summer heat here is boiling the impurities out of my blood --- or may be adding a new variety.

The Sinadanio Collection has again been withdrawn from the marked and not a specimen will be sold this year.

I fancy that with true Oriental genius, they are encouraging experts and collectors to come here in the expectation of securing a few of the treasures, while in fact, their actual motive is to thoroughly advertise the collection, in advance of some great public sale hereafter in Paris or London. It is very amusing nevertheless, and in a way instructive. Old Ali Arabi of manuscript fame, confessed yesterday in true Pagan style to having lied religiously to Prof.Dennison when he (the Prof.) went to seem him last April in my beehalf. After this interesting yarn he descended in to his "holy of holies" and produced two large tin boxes filled with manuscripts which he said he had kept laid away for me for many months and which he would not show Dennison nor any of the other great biblical scholars and archaelogists who visited Ali during the Annual meeting held here last Spring. Ali's devotion to my interests in the face of such a great body of anxious buyers of International reputation, naturally excites my suspicions. And I shall move with as much discretion as I can command. The MSS. are attractive in appearance, but they are not, I am sure, equal in quality to those first secured by me. I can't read a word of the thousands contained