36 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES collapse into the water, where they still continued their combat of words and blows, even when occasionally submerged— Quamquam sunt sub aqua sub aqua maledicere tentant.

We journeyed towards Wady Halfa in the old stern-wheeler és, which was crowded with officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and as it towed a large barge on either side full of the rank and file of the 2nd _ Battalion, we made slow progress. There is but little incident to chronicle on a Nile voyage, and it is difficult to understand why, even in winter, people select the Nile as the river par excellence for steamboat tours. The eye falls continually upon bleak hills and dreary sand plains on either bank, relieved only by occasional patches of dkurra and date palms, while the monotony which hangs like a pall over everything Egyptian—landscape, architecture, sculpture — becomes in time most oppressive and wearisome. The fact is, that were it not for the social pleasures one may, or may not, derive from several weeks’ sojourn on one of Cook’s steamers, nobody except a few souls really interested in the antiquities of Upper Egypt would undertake this voyage.