KALABASHEE. 503 on as soon as I got on board. I should like to know their opinion of me. I have no doubt the people considered me the most eccentric Frank who ever came among them.

The next morning we reached Kalabshee, and before sunrise I was standing on the long stone platform before the temple. The pylon of hewn sandstone rises grandly above the spacious portal, and from the exterior the building has a most imposing air. Its interior once, probably, did not diminish the impression thus given ; but at present it is such an utter mass of ruin that the finest details are entirely lost. The temple is so covered with the enormous fragments of the roof and walls that it is a work of some difficulty to examine it ; but it does not repay any laborious inspection. The outer wall which surrounds it has also been hurled down, and the whole place is a complete wreck. I know of no temple which has been subjected to such violence, unless it be that of Soleb, in Dar El-Mahass.

Below the temple we passed the Bab (Gate) El-Kalabshee, where the river is hemmed in between enormous boulders of granite and porphyry. The morning was cold and dark, and had there been firs instead of palms, I could have believed myself on some flood among the hills of Norway. I urged on the boys, as I wished to reach Dabod before dark, and as Ali, who was anxious to get back to Egypt, took a hand at the oar occasionally, our boat touched the high bank below the temple just after sunset. There is a little village near the place, and the reapers in the ripe wheat-fields behind it were closing their day's labor. One old man, who had no doubt been a servant in Cairo, greeted me with " buona sera ! " Achmet followed, to keep off the candidates for backsheesh, and I stood alone in