198 Philce Still Unspoiled [!895 



is, is perhaps the one perfect thing in the world, and anything added to 

 or taken from it would probably spoil it. So I trust they will leave it 

 alone. At the same time if they would be content with banking the 

 river to the natural height of the Nile at flood, I do not see that it 

 need do a great harm. But of course they want more, and to make it 

 the biggest engineering thing in the universe. The situation is tempt- 

 ing to an engineer, as the solid boulders of granite would make it an 

 heroic bit of stonework. 



" At eight we started again up the river. The change of scenery 

 above the cataract is most sudden and complete, made more so by 'the 

 as sudden and complete change in the inhabitants, who are here Berbers. 

 Indeed, Egypt ends abruptly at Assouan. The Soudan begins at Philae. 

 These upper reaches, between piled-up granite boulders, are very at- 

 tractive, as there are many places one might use as hermitages, islands 

 of rock with a few sont trees and palms, some having the remains on 

 them of buildings. At Kalabsheh a new and still narrower gate is 

 passed. This is where the French chose their site for the dam. It 

 is difficult to say which of the two sites would be the best for the 

 purpose. Thus, all day long, between endless granite boulders on the 

 eastern shore, and the same, partly covered with drift sand, on the 

 western, the cultivation almost nil, a narrow fringe of palms and sonts 

 and scyyals, with here and there a patch of vegetables sown at the 

 river's edge or a field of durra. 



" yth Nov. — We stopped for the night at Dendur, and in the morn- 

 ing light found ourselves outside the narrow gorge, and among drifts 

 of nefud — red sand — on the western bank, apparently encroaching. 

 Broadwood tells me there is a long line of nefuds running north-west 

 which is impassable for camels. This, as I understand him, wes't of 

 the road to the oases. But I doubt if he has been far enough to know. 



" I have made friends on board with a military doctor, Mohammed 

 Eff. Towfik, who began by quarrelling with me as an Englishman 

 for the occupation of Egypt, but we speedily came to an understand- 

 ing, and I find him to be a friend of Mohammed Abdu's, and a staunch 

 Nationalist of the fellah party. Though still a young man, perhaps 

 thirty-five, he remembers the Russian war of 1877, and knew Arabi. 

 He told me very frankly that there were people who suspected me of 

 having stood in with our diplomacy in 1882. It was pleasant to find 

 a man so fearless and outspoken, especially as much of our conversa- 

 tion was within hearing of the English officers, Broadwood, Lawrie, and 

 a third, Healy, who understands Arabic. The doctor is a fellah, pro- 

 prietor of 300 feddans near Benisouef, and declares that the fellahin 

 are in a worse condition materially than before the rebellion. I doubt 

 this. But I think it likely he is right about Upper Egypt. Certainly 

 all this district south of Assouan shows traces of decline; and the 



