with the well-bred sailor Ramadan, were sent to bivouac on the
Pylon. Ramadan took the hareem under his special and most respectful
charge, and waited on us devotedly, but never raised his eyes to our
faces, or spoke till spoken to. Philae is six or seven miles from
Assouan, and we went on donkeys through the beautiful Shellaleeh (the
village of the cataract), and the noble place of tombs of Assouan. Great
was the amazement of everyone at seeing Europeans so out of season; we
were like swallows in January to them. I could not sleep for the heat in
the room, and threw on an _abbayeh_ (cloak) and went and lay on the
parapet of the temple. What a night! What a lovely view! The stars
gave as much light as the moon in Europe, and all but the cataract was
still as death and glowing hot, and the palm-trees were more graceful and
dreamy than ever. Then Omar woke, and came and sat at my feet, and
rubbed them, and sang a song of a Turkish slave. I said, 'Do not rub my
feet, oh brother--that is not fit for thee' (because it is below the
dignity of a free Muslim altogether to touch shoes or feet), but he sang
in his song, 'The slave of the Turk may be set free by money, but how
shall one be ransomed who has been paid for by kind actions and sweet
words?' Then the day broke deep crimson, and I went down and bathed in
the Nile, and saw the girls on the island opposite in their summer
fashions, consisting of a leathern fringe round their slender
hips--divinely graceful--bearing huge saucer-shaped baskets of corn on
their stately young heads; and I went up and sat at the end of the
colonnade looking up into Ethiopia, and dreamed dreams of 'Him who sleeps
in Philae,' until the great Amun Ra kissed my northern face too hotly,
and drove me into the temple to breakfast, and coffee, and pipes, and
_kief_. And in the evening three little naked Nubians rowed us about for
two or three hours on the glorious river in a boat made of thousands of
bits of wood, each a foot long; and between whiles they jumped overboard
and disappeared, and came up on the other side of the boat. Assouan was
full of Turkish soldiers, who came and took away our donkeys, and stared
at our faces most irreligiously. I did not go on shore at Kom Ombos or
El Kab, only at Edfou, where we spent the day in the temple; and at
Esneh, where we tried to buy sugar, tobacco, etc., and found nothing at
all, though Esneh is a _chef-lieu_, with a Moudir. It is only in winte