DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0343
DISCO VERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL. 325
reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very briefly many
places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.
We left Abou Sirabel just as the moou was rising on
the evening of the 18th of February, and dropped
down with the current for three or four miles before moor-
ing for the night. At six next morning the men began
rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi
were still looking placidly after ns across a ridge of inter-
vening hills. They were then more than five miles distant
in a direct line; but every feature was still distinct in the
early daylight. One went up again and again, as long as
they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last
With that same heartache which conies of a farewell view of
the Alps.
When I say that we were seventeen days getting from
Abou Simbel to Philae, and that we had the wind against
us from sunrise till sunset almost every day, it will be seen
that our progress was of the slowest. To those who were
tired of temples, and to the crew who were running short
of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of
rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary
enough.
Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by.
Sometimes the barren desert hems us in to right and left,
With never a blade of green between the rock and the river.
Sometimes, as at Tosko,* we come upon an open tract,
where there are palms and castor-berry plantations and
corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at
losko with his gun, while the little lady and the writer
climb a solitary rock about two hundred feet above the
river. The bank shelves here, and a crescent-like wave of
1'iundation, about three miles in length, overflows it every
season. From this height one sees exactly how far the
Wave goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is
there. Now it is a bay of barley, full to the brim, and
riPpling to the breeze. Beyond the green conies the desert;
the one defined against the other as sharply as water against
land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young
green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-
banks, like a tidal river near the sea. The village, squared
Tosko is on the eastern bank, and not, as in Keith Johnston's
maP. on the west,
reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very briefly many
places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.
We left Abou Sirabel just as the moou was rising on
the evening of the 18th of February, and dropped
down with the current for three or four miles before moor-
ing for the night. At six next morning the men began
rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi
were still looking placidly after ns across a ridge of inter-
vening hills. They were then more than five miles distant
in a direct line; but every feature was still distinct in the
early daylight. One went up again and again, as long as
they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last
With that same heartache which conies of a farewell view of
the Alps.
When I say that we were seventeen days getting from
Abou Simbel to Philae, and that we had the wind against
us from sunrise till sunset almost every day, it will be seen
that our progress was of the slowest. To those who were
tired of temples, and to the crew who were running short
of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of
rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary
enough.
Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by.
Sometimes the barren desert hems us in to right and left,
With never a blade of green between the rock and the river.
Sometimes, as at Tosko,* we come upon an open tract,
where there are palms and castor-berry plantations and
corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at
losko with his gun, while the little lady and the writer
climb a solitary rock about two hundred feet above the
river. The bank shelves here, and a crescent-like wave of
1'iundation, about three miles in length, overflows it every
season. From this height one sees exactly how far the
Wave goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is
there. Now it is a bay of barley, full to the brim, and
riPpling to the breeze. Beyond the green conies the desert;
the one defined against the other as sharply as water against
land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young
green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-
banks, like a tidal river near the sea. The village, squared
Tosko is on the eastern bank, and not, as in Keith Johnston's
maP. on the west,