EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE. 103 zaar. In the afternoon the wind increased to a small gale, and bore us rapidly past Gebel Tookk to the city of Girgeh. so named in Coptic times from the Christian saint, George.

Like Manfalont, it has been half washed away by the Nile, and two lofty minarets were hanging on the brink of the slippery bank, awaiting their turn to fall. About twelve miles from Gngeh, in the Libyan Desert, are the ruins of Abydus, now covered by the sand, except the top of the portico and roof of the temple-palace of Sesostris, and part of the temple of Osiris. We held a council whether we should waste the favorable wind or miss Abydus, and the testimony of Achmet, who had visited the ruins, having been taken, we chose the latter alternative. By this time Girgeh was nearly out of sight, and we comforted ourselves with the hope of soon seeing Dendera.

The pilgrims to Mecca, by the Kenneh and Kosseir route, were on their return, and we met a number of boats, crowded with them, on their way to Cairo from the former place.

Most of the boats carried the red flag, with the star and crescent. On the morning after leaving Girgeh, we took a long stroll through the fields of Farshoot, which is, after Siout, the richest agricultural district of Upper Egypt. An excellent system of irrigation, by means of canals, is kept up, and the result shows what might be made of Egypt, were its great natural resources rightly employed. The Nile offers a perpetual fountain of plenty and prosperity, and its long valley, from Nubia to the sea, would become, in other hands, the garden of the world. So rich and pregnant a soil I have never seen.

Here, side by side, flourish wheat, maize, cotton, sugar-cane, indigo, hemp, rice, dourra, tobacco, olives, dates, oranges, and