to go.  It is of no use to talk of the ruins; everybody has said, I suppose, all that can be said, but Philae surpassed my expectations.  No wonder the Arab legends of Ans el Wogood are so romantic, and Abou Simbel and many more.  The scribbling of names is quite infamous, beautiful paintings are defaced by Tomkins and Hobson, but worst of all Prince Puckler Muskau has engraved his and his Ordenskreuz in huge letters on the naked breast of that august and pathetic giant who sits at Abou Simbel.  I wish someone would kick him for his profanity.

I have eaten many odd things with odd people in queer places, dined in a respectable Nubian family (the castor-oil was trying), been to a Nubian wedding—­such a dance I saw.  Made friends with a man much looked up to in his place (Kalabshee—­notorious for cutting throats), inasmuch as he had killed several intrusive tax-gatherers and recruiting officers.  He was very gentlemanly and kind and carried me up a place so steep I could not have reached it.  Just below the cataract—­by-the-by going up is nothing but noise and shouting, but coming down is fine fun—­Fantasia khateer as my excellent little Nubian pilot said.  My sailors all prayed away manfully and were horribly frightened.  I confess my pulse quickened, but I don’t think it was fear.  Well, below the cataract I stopped for a religious fete, and went to a holy tomb with the darweesh, so extraordinarily handsome and graceful—­the true feingemacht noble Bedaween type.  He took care of me through the crowd, who never had seen a Frank woman before and crowded fearfully, and pushed the true believers unmercifully to make way for me.  He was particularly pleased at my not being afraid of Arabs; I laughed, and asked if he was afraid of us.  ’Oh no! he would like to come to England; when there he would work to eat and drink, and then sit and sleep in the church.’  I was positively ashamed to tell my religious friend that with us the ‘house of God’ is not the house of the poor stranger.  I asked him to eat with me but he was holding a preliminary Ramadan (it begins next week), and could not; but he brought his handsome sister, who was richly dressed, and begged me to visit him and eat of his bread, cheese and milk.  Such is the treatment one finds if one leaves the highroad and the backsheesh-hunting parasites.  There are plenty of ‘gentlemen’ barefooted and clad in a shirt and cloak ready to pay attentions which you may return with a civil look and greeting, and if you offer a cup of coffee and a seat on the floor you give great pleasure, still more if you eat the dourah and dates, or bread and sour milk with an appetite.

At Koom Ombo we met a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame snakes.  After a little talk he proposed to initiate me, and so we sat down and held hands like people marrying.  Omar sat behind me and repeated the words as my ‘Wakeel,’ then the Rifaee twisted a cobra round our joined hands and requested me to spit on it, he did the same and I was pronounced safe and enveloped in snakes.  My sailors groaned and Omar shuddered as the snakes put out their tongues—­the darweesh and I smiled at each other like Roman augurs.  I need not say the creatures were toothless.