It was in the middle of January, after a pleasant journey up the Nile from Lower Egypt, on board a luxuriously fitted up “dahabeah,” that I arrived at Korosko, a Nubian village about a thousand miles from the Mediterranean.  The ascent of the Nile was simply a prolonged feast in this comfortable sailing-craft, with the panorama of imposing temples and gigantic ruins relieving the dreary monotony of the river-banks.  The valley of this ancient stream, from the First Cataract, where it ceases to be navigable, to Cairo, is remarkable alone to the traveler for its vast structures and mausoleums.  The sikeahs and shadofs, which are employed to raise water from the river, in order that it may be used for irrigation, suggest that no improvement has been made in Egyptian farming for four thousand years.  But the smoke curling away from tall chimneys, and the noise of busy machinery in the midst of extensive fields of sugarcane, remind us that Egypt has become one of the greatest sugar-producing powers of the East.  From the site of ancient Memphis to Korosko, comprising about six degrees of latitude, the soil under cultivation rarely extends beyond the distance of a mile into the interior, while to eastward and westward is one vast, uninhabited waste, the camping-ground of the Bedouins, who roam from river to sea in predatory bands, leading otherwise aimless lives.  Thinly populated, and now without the means of subsisting large communities, Upper Egypt can never become what it was when, as we are taught, the walls of Thebes inclosed 4,000,000 of people, and the Nile was bridged from shore to shore.  Turning from this strange land, I encamped on the border of the Nubian Desert, and prepared to set out on camel-back toward the sources of the Nile.

In conjunction with the local officials I began the necessary preparations, which involved the selection of forty-two camels, three donkeys, and nineteen servants.  My ample provision and preparation consisted of the camels’ feed—­durah and barley, stowed in plaited saddle-bags; filling the goatskins with water, each containing an average of five gallons.  Eighty were required for the journey.  Three sheep, a coup-full of chickens, a desert range, a wall-tent, with the other supplies, made up over 10,000 pounds of baggage as our caravan, entering the northern door of the barren and dreary steppe, felt its way through a deep ravine paved with boulders, shifting sands, and dead camels.  We soon left the bluffs and crags which form the barrier between the Nile and the desolate land beyond, and then indeed the real journey began.