2 12 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

From the first cataract it is about 1 10 miles of river journey to Korosko, the starting-point, as we have seen, for the journey across the desert to Abu Hamed, and thence the river is obstructed by many rocky shoals and has in its centre large sand-banks, where the crocodiles often bask. The great bend of the river makes the course between Korosko and Derr s.s.e., so that the boats are often hung up on the voyage, and if a north wind is blowing can make no headway at all. The journey from Korosko to Wacly Haifa, another hundred miles, includes a good many places of interest, the most important of which is, of course, Abu Simbel, where the temples hewn in the gritstone rock, and especially the vast facade of the great temple with its superb colossal figures and marvellous sculptured ornamentation, are the most interesting monuments in Nubia. The whole of this district, including Ferayg, opposite Abu Simnel and Forras on the west bank, is full of marvellously suggestive remains: temples, tombs, tablets, columns, grottoes, and at Ferayg the small excavated temple, consisting of a hall supported by four columns, two side chambers or wings, and an adytum, had, ages after it had been formed, become a Christian church, and on the ceiling may be seen paintings of Christ blessing St. George, who is spearing the dragon. It is not easy to imagine the strange effect of the rapid rush and turmoil of a modern force of armed English soldiers and sailors making its way amidst what is usually a still and silent scene — the solemn relics of the old world — the stories of tomb and temple, and of those to whom they were dedicated, written on the walls themselves in a language Fof enigma. It is not easy to picture the uproar and bustle on the banks at those places where consignments of stores, arms, and accoutrements were collected: the shouting and clangour, the tramping and general confusion in towns which, in ordinary times, may have some periodical fair or market to suit the coming and going of caravans across the desert, but around which the dust of ages has gathered upon ruins devoted to the owls and the bats.

At Wady Haifa, a good-sized irregular village with a dreary desolate outlook, but lying in a belt of palms and separated from