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lizard, which tried to escape my notice in the same way, in the next dip. If the lizard had not been so white I should have taken it for the dreaded cerastes or horned viper-the first thought that came into my mind when I saw it. We rode back along the canal, whose banks were quite flowery, for Egypt. But I was more interested to see bulrushes, which the detractors of Mosaic legend say will not grow in Egypt. I did not see them anywhere on the Nile, it is true, but neither did I see any papyrus, which grows in immense quantities up the White Nile. The Sud is mostly composed of papyrus. Nicholas Khouri has all sorts of modern appliances on his thousand-acre estate here. He had a levelling scoop at work on the banks of the canal.

He gave us a very excellent lunch in a room just inside the gate of his farm buildings, which were very cool with their thick mud walls. A mastaba, a broad bench made of mud covered with matting, went round two sides of it.

The luncheon basket came from Harrod's, in South Kensington, and there were a score or two of potted delicacies, beginning with pâté de foie gras and caviare. There were also native viands, such as a bowl of sour milk and of course Turkish coffee. Before we sat down a suffragi brought an ibreek and tisht, a brass jug with a spout like a coffee-pot, and a brass basin with a sort of colander covering its bottom, to pour water over our hands in the Arab fashion.

When that hospitable meal at length came to an end, we sallied out to see the Omdeh, who lived in a fine arcaded house with the most romantic-looking pigeon towers I ever saw. He was a delightful old gentleman, as the uncorrupted Arab often is, and while we were waiting for the statutory coffee and oranges, had his Arab chargers brought to go through their paces, and took us into a courtyard, where his tame gazelles were gambolling about in their mad fashion, turning their ankles over. He was very hospitable, but he used up the rest of our day in beautiful Eastern compliments as luxuriant as sweet-peas.

That night, and most of our money, we spent at the shop of the grocer, who bought up all the little gods and bits

of mummies which the fellahin found when they were carting away (for manure) the dust of Crocodilopolis, which bore so many notable erections in the days of the Ptolemies. And the next morning very early we had to say good-bye to Nicholas Khouri, the fairy prince who had made our visit to the Fayum one of the most interesting of all our experiences in Egypt. Not only was his hospitality amazing, but he took us to places unspoiled by contact with Europeans, and asked questions and interpreted answers for us about the most outof-the-way subjects.

THE

CHAPTER XXV

Assyut and Abydos

HE tourist is generally disappointed with Assyut. It is so difficult for him to see it advantageously; yet the capital of Upper Egypt is a noble city with many striking beauties. The disappointment is largely due to expecting too much.

Assyut, as the voyager approaches it from the north, comes into view an hour or two before it is reached, owing to the doubling of the river. A dozen white minarets rise from the rich groves which embosom it and make a wall of green against the sky. He expects a city as picturesque as Rosetta. One of the chief handbooks encourages him in his error because it says that "the bazars of Assyut are so Oriental."

The handbook is right in saying that. But it omits to point out that a bazar can be too Oriental to possess much interest for the tourist. The Oriental has no desire for the stage properties which thrill the soul of the traveller. He does not collect curios, but he has a burning desire for shoddy imitations of Englishmen's boots and hosiery; he sometimes even goes as far as cheap clocks; and celluloid finery he loves almost as much as shoddy socks and handkerchiefs; the contents of a sixpenny-halfpenny Edgware Road bazar would enchant an Arab. The bazar of Assyut is a faint reflection of their glories mixed up with a few muzzle-loading Bedâwin guns and kohl bottles.

To the foreigner the Assyut bazar offers nothing but fly switches and hippopotamus hide and ebony walking-sticks; and these are mostly in the road down to the river, where pharmacies flourish under names of Chinese extravagance.

The real charms of Assyut are its aspect from without, and its native life within. It may have a good mosque or two and some stately Arab mansions. I did not see any, but I did not sift this great town of sixty-five thousand inhabitants with any thoroughness. The only mosque I was shown over was a small affair with a passable minaret and a quaint sundial. But the native inns and restaurants were unusually interesting, for they were purely Arab. And I found other phases of native life to interest me at the end of the bazar. Colour was served by the tall sheaves of green and purple sugar-cane stacked against the walls of the houses.

But Assyut is seen at its best from the Hill of the Tombs, when the Nile flood spreads up to its walls and transforms it into a lake-bound medieval city, with its groves and minarets reflected in the placid waters. And nowhere in all Egypt can so many miles of young green be seen in the spring.

Those hills contain the tombs of more than one ancient necropolis, for Assyut was the City of the Wolf. The best of them are like the tombs of Beni Hassan inside, but few are good, because destruction overtook the city before they were finished. In one of them John the Hermit was living when the eunuch of the Emperor Theodosius came to consult him as an oracle. He had built himself into the tomb, but appeared at an opening to admiring multitudes all Saturday and Sunday. The austere hermit prophesied a bloody but a certain victory for the Emperor, which was fulfilled by the great battle of Aquileja. There was quite a nest of hermits on this hill, which was at a convenient distance from a large city. Between it and Assyut is the beautiful Arab cemetery, the finest in all Egypt. It looks as large as the city itself; it has domes and battlements innumerable, all dazzling white, and has a wall and streets.

I imagine that Assyut must have been altered greatly in the last few years-not only by the birth of the English quarter (which has risen with beautiful gardens along the river bank) to take care of the barrage, but in the decline of its bazars. Travellers who visited it not very long ago speak of its having many covered streets, and shops almost as good

[graphic]

THE VILLAGE OF KURNA AND ITS FELLAHIN ON THE PLAIN OF THEBES.

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