dera, had to be dug out of an appalling mass of earth and rubbish, and the piles of dirt that still surround the temple are evidence of the magnitude of the task, looking like sizable hills.

I can readily credit the statement that there is no better preserved old building in the world than this temple of Horus. It is magnificent in every way, imposing in size, grandly designed, and successfully carried out to the last detail. It has every appearance of being able to stand forever—and I for one hope it will, as a monument to the Eternal, under whatever name!

March 11. We have arrived at Assuan at last in the midst of a hot and sultry afternoon. It is the atmosphere of midsummer, and the breeze comes from the Sahara. Nobody has much ambition to tempt the fates by exploring anything to-day, and owing to the low water we are anchored a mile or so below the town.

By dint of a very early start we were enabled to see the temple of Kom Ombo in great comfort before the heat began to be oppressive. It was a beautiful temple, different from any we have yet seen, and likewise admirably executed, although far less perfect in its present state than the temple at Edfû.

It was hardly five minutes' walk distant from the

of

landing, but the way was beset by the worst array pathetic cripples and blind beggars I have ever beheld. They wrung our hearts by their appearance and their pitiful pleading poor scrofulous boys and sightless girls. It took all the humor out of the Professor's stock joke about the twin gods of Egypt being "Psoriasis and Scrofula." They dogged our footsteps all along the bank through plantations of castor-oil plant. But from the temple itself they were held aloof by the custodian, and once within, we were spared the heartrending sight of their deformity.

The great temple of Kom Ombo has this peculiarity, that it is virtually two temples in one, sacred both to the gods of good and the gods of evil. I suspect a slight analogy to the custom of some of our own Indians, who are said to pray, not to the good god, but to the bad god, when it is a question of escaping from evil, on the theory that the good god needs no supplication, while the bad one most emphatically does.

By a parity of reasoning, no doubt, we all voted the bad god the more interesting deity of the place. His representations, with the grotesque head of the crocodile, or hippopotamus, were vastly more diverting than those of the more familiar Hathor, or Horus, or Thoth.

In plan the temple of Kom Ombo is like all the

UNIV. OF

others, except that the river has robbed it of its pylon, while its court before the main building is very small. It is, or was, completely girdled by a wall of brick, only part of which is left. Then follows a sort of inner cincture passing around the actual building and serving to inclose the hypostyle hall, which in this case does duty also as a vestibule. In the heart of the temple proper are two shrines instead of a single one, made necessary by the duplex character of the worship.

Owing to the appearance of an entirely new conception of the gods - the evil ones— the inscriptions of the columns took on a fresh interest. They were easily observed in the brilliant light of the forenoon, and were divided in character between those in low relief and those that were merely incised - a cheaper form of carving which nevertheless is decidedly the more common in these Ptolemaic and semi-Roman temples.

There was nothing else at Kom Ombo to see, and the steamer was able to complete her southward voyage early this afternoon when we came to our final resting-place at Assuan- or just below it: We can descry the town a little farther up the river, located on its eastern shore and facing the black and rocky island of Elephantine, around which the dwindling flood of the river pours in two tortuous channels. I