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sailed or rowed-around it this afternoon, and

again by moonlight this evening, but for once the night has brought little chill and the promise is for a hot time to-morrow, when we shall - some of us at least seek out Philæ and make our farthest southing. To be sure, to-morrow is Sunday, and the official activities of Cook are suspended with true British regard for the Sabbath. The Dean is going to preach at the chapel on shore, and Raschid to-night caused a ripple of laughter by closing his speech with the announcement that "the backsheesh for the clergyman will be five piastres." However, Mr. T., who has a fine family of daughters and a special dragoman of his own, is going to Philæ, and we are about to tempt Providence by going too, making the entire journey by boat. May a disapproving heaven still send us a favoring breeze!

CHAPTER XV. PHILE

ARCH 12. To-day we reached our farthest

MAR

south. We have seen Philæat least what part of it remains above water. And as we turned away from it, under the broiling afternoon sun, I felt, with what was very like a pang of regret, that we had headed about toward home.

It has been a day to remember. The time will come, I fear, when those who go to Assuan will see nothing of the island temples, once the jewel of Upper Egypt, which lie behind the great dam. The addition of fifteen feet more to that structure will almost totally engulf even the higher parts of the shrine. The chaste "Bed of Pharaoh" will be submerged. And when that time comes, those of us who have

actually looked upon these gems of Egyptian architecture in the days of their waning glory will give ourselves airs, no doubt!

Another time if I am spared-I shall come to Assuan in mid-winter. March is proving much too hot. To-day has been breathless and torrid with the mercury at nearly a hundred- much too hot even for a New England summer day and far too trying for those of us who so lately came hither from ice and snow. We are all a bit prostrated to-night by the experience, but what of that? Have we not seen Philæ, and the great dam, and have we not shot the meagre rapids of the First Cataract?

T., a jovial Englishman of our company on the ship, thoughtfully invited us to go with him to Philæ in advance of the crowd-for T. has a special dragoman of his own, a dapper young Egyptian rejoicing in the name of Taiyah. I met him first on the banks of the river at Bedreschein on the day devoted by all but me to Sakkâra. He introduced himself with a view to future engagements and presented an array of recommendations as long as the moral law, including the potent name of Robert Hichens. However, but few of us are such swells as to afford a special man, and as a matter of fact no one really needs that luxury. If you have a private dragoman he merely goes ahead and meets you at every land

ing, has some selected donkeys waiting for you, rides over the ground and dispenses misinformation about the ruins which the regular dragoman does quite as well, and finally departs by train to meet you at the next stop. The one appreciable advantage is in being independent of hoi polloi and fairly free from bother in the matter of backsheesh problems. The consummate disadvantage may turn out to be that your attendant is almost too anxious to oblige and entertain. You may be asked to the house of some of his relations, which is interesting, and given a dinner of prodigious length and nativeness, which is interesting, too, but cloying. I have had experience of such but that was years ago, in Greece, and therefore another story. Suffice it to say that I can hardly to this day abide the thought of beer and oysters, or cups of Samian wine.

All of which, however, does not at all imply that Taiyah did aught to-day but justify his existence to the full. His felucca, gayly decked with flags and a merciful awning, came alongside early, for we were to go to Philæ by water. The craft was manned by six husky Egyptians and an agile monkey of a boy, in addition to Taiyah himself, resplendent in a suit of tremendous checks, a freshly ironed tarbush, and a broad smile that simply would not come off.

We departed under a pitiless sun and over a river

as placid as a mirror. Not a breath filled the flapping sail. The men bent to the oars. The rest of us retreated to the friendly shelter of the awning and abandoned ourselves to the luxury of seeing other people work. Meantime Taiyah took me covertly aside and whispered anxious inquiries as to the depth of the Professor's understanding of Egyptology, being a little wary of professional experts in that line, and having no wish to be contradicted in the full tide of his explanations of hieroglyphic mysteries. I reassured him. Later I discovered that he had likewise sounded the Professor himself, who, by the way, is not an Egyptologist at all, and who knows as much about hieroglyphs as, in the homely New England phrase, "a cow does of calculus."

"He asked me," said the Professor, "if I could decipher inscriptions; and I told him that I could do so 'only with difficulty.' I omitted to add, however, that the difficulty was extreme!"

At all events, Taiyah was reassured and we went on our way, wilted but rejoicing, passing up the western channel by the island of Elephantine and through a maze and wilderness of smooth, black boulders that have been defying the waters of the Nile since the day of creation. Thus far it was familiar ground, or rather water, - for we sailed over the same stretch of river twice yesterday and

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