156 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

pia. He was accompanied by his wife, a French lady, who greeted us courteously, and two daughters of semi- Abyssinian origin. The latter were dressed in Oriental costume, but un veiled. M. Linant is a tall, grave person, about fifty years of age. He wore a crescent of diamonds on his breast, and his features expressed all the dignity and repose of one who had become thoroughly naturalized in the East.

As the wind carried us out into the stream, we saw the towers of the temple of Isis, on Philse, through a savage gorge of the river. The enormous masses of dark granite were piled on either .side to a height of several hundred feet, taking in some places the forms of monoliths and sitting colossi, one of which appeared so lightly balanced on the loose summit that a strong gale might topple it down the steep. The current in the narrow channel was so violent that we could make no headway, but a Nubian boy, swimming on a palm-log, carried a rope to the shore, and we were at length towed with much labor into the more tranquil basin girdling Philse. The four lofty towers of the two pylons, the side corridors of pillars and the exterior walls of the temple seem perfectly preserved, on approaching the island, the green turf of whose banks and the grouping of its palms quite conceal the ruins of a miserable mud village which surrounds the structures. Philse is the jewel of the Nile, but -these ruins are an unsightly blotch, which takes away half its lustre. The setting is nevertheless perfect. The basin of black, jagged mountains, folding on all sides, yet half-disclosing the avenues to Egypt and Nubia; the hem of emerald turf at their feet, sprinkled with clusters of palm, and here and 4 there the pillar or wall of a temple ; the ring of the bright river, no longer turbid as in Lower