THE "GENERAL SHINDY AT ASSIOUT. 209 Turkish, half Hellene. The movement resembled that which the most casual observer notices at Port Said, or Suez, or Aden, or Singapore when a mail steamer is coaling"; but it was far more interesting — the variety of packages, none ever being like its predecessor and yet all preserving some sort of order; the variety of their bearers, the constantly-varying hue of nature now trending towards repose, all combining- to show an ensemble which might have been represented, in a dim and distant way, on the walls of the Royal Academy, but could never have been shown by an artist in black and white, for the ' general shindy,' to use the expression of an Irish serjeant of a Scottish regiment, which was the essence of the scene must have been omitted. I fear I have very imperfectly presented it; but when it is said that I have written this on my hand, by the flickering- light of a Nile steamer, any inelegancies will be pardoned by those who know what campaigning is."

Let us for a moment glance at the territory within which the preparations for the expedition to Khartum were being carried on, and the protection of which against the possible descent of the Mahdi was considered essential. In previous pages we have followed the outlines of the geography of the Nile provinces and the Soudan, as occasion arose, to indicate the various localities mentioned in the narrative, and we now find ourselves on the river and its banks from Assiout to Assouan, Wady Haifa, and on the way to Dongola.

Assiout or Asyoot, the capital of the province of the same name and officially the residence of the governor of Upper Egypt, is on or near the site of the old " City of the Wolves," Lycopolis, so named from the inhabitants offering worship to Anubis or Taphcra, " the watcher of the streets," the deity with the jackal head, so commonly depicted in Egyptian wall sculptures. The wolf appears to have been the sacred animal there, for mummies ot wolves have frequently been found in the smaller caves ami recesses or excavations of the rock. It is a considerable town, and perhaps with an outlook more picturesque than most others in Egypt.

The city stands about a mile from the river, near the foot of a Vol. III. 50