250 EXTRACTS FROM 



Soon after this short interlude we arrived at a wretched 

 miserable-looking village, the low ruinous mud hovels of 

 which were not worthy of its splendid surroundings of lofty 

 palms and wide-spreading sycamores. , The inhabitants 

 came running out to look at us, the older ones in airy 

 costumes, the children in none at all. Near this village 

 the road took a turn and soon brought us to the margin of 

 the lake. 



When everything had been unloaded from the horses and 

 the pack animals we got into the boats. These were truly 

 wretched crafts, nor could our lake-dwelling ancestors have 

 used anything worse than these flat four-cornered boxes, 

 which were slowly propelled with the most primitive oars by 

 five or six sturdy fellows. Inside them everything was full 

 of old fish-bones, and there was such a stench of dirt of all 

 sorts, and particularly of stinking fish, that we could only 

 partially protect ourselves from it by the perpetual smoking 

 of cigarettes. The fishermen of the earliest Egyptian eras 

 probably used the same sort of boats as their descendants of 

 to-day at Birket-el-Karun. 



With melancholy songs and splashing oars we glided over 

 the blue surface of this large interesting lake, which is bordered 

 on one side by the cultivated ground and on the others by 

 the true desert. All along its shores runs a belt of dense 

 luxuriant bushes, sometimes narrow, sometimes broad, and 

 this gives it a distinctive character. Nowhere does one see 

 human habitations, and the grand but undeniably depressing 

 effect of the scene is heightened by the deep leaden blue of 

 the salt water. It seems strange to the traveller to find a 

 lake so far from the sea (the reader will .kindly look at a 

 map) in whose depths live true marine fish and other sorts of 

 creatures ; but as the entire desert is salt, the lakes on its 

 borders are naturally the same. 



When we had been half an hour on the way we perceived 



