Lear went to Egypt three times. In January 1869 he spent about a week in Cairo before going on to Sinai. In both 1853-4 and 1866-7 he spent the winter in Egypt, arriving in December and travelling up the Nile, as far as Philae in 1854 and the second Cataract in 1867. Lear's system of numbering the works he did on his tours makes it possible to trace his progress through the two Nile journeys are difficult to disentangle. However, this watercolour seems to fit in better between number '3' of 29 December 1853 and number '16' of 31 December (with Spink's 1991 and Sotheby's, 17 June, lot 42, respectively), with a companion work of 29 December but with no year indicated, and numbered '6' (Sotheby's 19 March 1970 in lot 37), then with a sequence of words from the 1866-7 trip: 1 January 1867, also numbered '6' (Sotheby's 17 June 1979, in lot 5), and two of 2 January 1867 numbered '22' and '24' (Sotheby's 19 March 1970 in lots 29 and 37 respectively). On 4 January 1854 Lear wrote to his sister Ann praising the Nile: 'So far, it is a magnificent river, with endless villages - hundreds & hundreds on its banks, all fringed with palms, & reflected in the water ... The most beautiful feature is the number of birds, which look like giant moths ...' (V. Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer, 1968, p. 122)