DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0314
29G A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.
since leaving Cairo; but the sun was as continually putting
them wrong again, so that we had lost all count of the true
time. The first words with which we now greeted a new-
comer were: ".Do you know what o'clock it is?" To
which the stranger as invariably replied that it was the
very question he was himself about to ask. The confusion
became at last so great that, finding that we had about
eleven hours of day to thirteen of night, we decided to
establish an arbitrary canon; so we called it seven when the
sun rose and six when it set, which answered every
purpose.
It was between two and four o'clock, according to this
time of ours, that the southern cross was now visible every
morning. It is undoubtedly best seen at Abou Simbel.
The river is here very wide and just where the constellation
rises there is an opening in the mountains on the eastern
bank, so that these four fine stars, though still low in the
heavens, are seen in a free space of sky. If they make,
even so, a less magnificent appearance than one has been
led to expect, it is probably because we see them from too
low a point of view. To say that a constellation is fore-
shortened sounds absurd ; yet that is just what is the
matter with the Southern Cross at Abou Simbel. Viewed at
an angle of about thirty degrees, it necessarily looks dis-
tort and dim. If seen burning in the zenith, it would no
doubt come up to the level of its reputation.
It was now the fifth day after our return from Wady
llalfeh, when an event occurred that roused us to an un-
wonted pitch of excitement and kept us at high pressure
throughout the rest of our time.
The day was Sunday ; the date February 1G, 1874; the
time, according to Philffl reckoning, about eleven A. m.,
when the painter, enjoying his seventh day's holiday after
his own fashion, went strolling about among the rocks.
lie happened to turn his steps southward and, passing the
front of the great temple, climbed to the top of a little
shapeless mound of fallen clilf and sand and crude-brick
wall, just against the corner where the mountain slopes
down to the river. Immediately round this corner, look-
ing almost due south, and approachable only by a narrow
ledge of rock, arc two votive tablets, sculptured and
painted, both of the thirty-eighth year of Rameses II. We
had seen these from the river as we came back from Wady
since leaving Cairo; but the sun was as continually putting
them wrong again, so that we had lost all count of the true
time. The first words with which we now greeted a new-
comer were: ".Do you know what o'clock it is?" To
which the stranger as invariably replied that it was the
very question he was himself about to ask. The confusion
became at last so great that, finding that we had about
eleven hours of day to thirteen of night, we decided to
establish an arbitrary canon; so we called it seven when the
sun rose and six when it set, which answered every
purpose.
It was between two and four o'clock, according to this
time of ours, that the southern cross was now visible every
morning. It is undoubtedly best seen at Abou Simbel.
The river is here very wide and just where the constellation
rises there is an opening in the mountains on the eastern
bank, so that these four fine stars, though still low in the
heavens, are seen in a free space of sky. If they make,
even so, a less magnificent appearance than one has been
led to expect, it is probably because we see them from too
low a point of view. To say that a constellation is fore-
shortened sounds absurd ; yet that is just what is the
matter with the Southern Cross at Abou Simbel. Viewed at
an angle of about thirty degrees, it necessarily looks dis-
tort and dim. If seen burning in the zenith, it would no
doubt come up to the level of its reputation.
It was now the fifth day after our return from Wady
llalfeh, when an event occurred that roused us to an un-
wonted pitch of excitement and kept us at high pressure
throughout the rest of our time.
The day was Sunday ; the date February 1G, 1874; the
time, according to Philffl reckoning, about eleven A. m.,
when the painter, enjoying his seventh day's holiday after
his own fashion, went strolling about among the rocks.
lie happened to turn his steps southward and, passing the
front of the great temple, climbed to the top of a little
shapeless mound of fallen clilf and sand and crude-brick
wall, just against the corner where the mountain slopes
down to the river. Immediately round this corner, look-
ing almost due south, and approachable only by a narrow
ledge of rock, arc two votive tablets, sculptured and
painted, both of the thirty-eighth year of Rameses II. We
had seen these from the river as we came back from Wady