THE RUINS OF OMBOS 149 has been rouglily hewn into a sort of temple, supported by pil lars thirty feet square, and with an entrance as grand and rude as a work of the Titans.

In the morning we awoke in the shadow of Ombos, which stands on a hill overlooking the Nile, into which its temple to Isis has fallen. Little now remains of the great temple to Savak, the crocodile-headed god, the deity of Ombos, but it« double portico, supported by thirteen pillars, buried nearl} waist-deep in the sands. The aspect of these remains, seated on the lonely promontory commanding the course of the river and the harvest-land of the opposite shore, while the stealthy Desert approaches it from behind, and year by year heaps the sand higher against the shattered sanctuary, is sadly touching. We lingered and lingered around its columns, loth to leave the ruined grace which a very few years will obliterate. Two such foes as the Nile and the Desert make rapid progress, where no human hand is interposed to stay them. As we sailed away, a large crocodile, perhaps Savak himself, lay motionless on a sand-bank with his long snout raised in the air.

We were two days in sailing from Ombos to Assouan owing to a dead calm, the first in two weeks. The nights were very cool, and the mid-day temperature not too warm for comfort. One morning my thermometer stood at 40° ; the Arabs complained bitterly of the cold, and, wrapped in their woolen mantles, crawled about the deck as languidly as benumbed flies. At noon the mercury did not often rise above 75° in the shade. As we approach Nubia, the scenery of the river undergoes a complete change. The rugged hills of black sandstone and granite usurp the place of the fields, and leave but a narrow strip of cultivable land on either side. The Arabs are