A PICTURE OF ASSOUAN. 77 Colonel Stewart sub-governor of the Soudan, Ibrahim Bey director of war and marine, and Colonel Coetlogon governor of Khartum.

He then telegraphed to Nubar Pasha; " I am sending down many women and children to Korosko. I wish you would send a kindhearted man to meet them. Give him iooo; a European is best."

He could stay no longer. The dangerous and dreary journey of two hundred and fifty miles across the desert to Abu Hamed was before him. He required little preparation. He had accomplished marvellous journeys before, though none more perilous Assouan, the former Syene ("the opening"), is familiar to numerous tourists who have made the usual voyage to the first cataract and have made the customary visits to the island of Elephantine and to Philae. It seems, indeed, as though the Nile journey terminated there, for the river's course cannot be followed by the eye when this point is reached, 580 miles from Cairo. Assouan is a place of importance, and has always been a point of interest to the traveller, for, as Mariette Bey said, "One is tempted to think one's self in a new world; Egyptians, Turks, Barobras, half-naked Bisharees, and negroes of every kind mingle here; the inhabitants of Khartum are especially striking by their grand mien, black faces, and their fine heads, reminding one of the best types of northern races; to complete the picture, the merchandise consists of exotic gums, elephants' teeth, and the skins of beasts; in the midst of the crowd circulate the hawkers, no longer dealing in antiquities, but in clubs of ebony, pikes, lances, and arrows, whose iron points are said to be poisoned." But a change had come over the aspect of Assouan so far as the market and the merchandise were concerned.

No travellers and tourists were there to visit the granite quarries, the Saracenic ruins, and the tombs of saints and sheikhs. The palm-groves and clusters of white houses were mostly deserted except by the inhabitants, and those who were there on the serious business of preparing for the evacuation of the Soudan and awaiting the arrival of small trading caravans, or of companies of perishing refugees and sick and wounded soldiers who had made their way from various points by the desert journey or Dongola,