240 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



on the morning of the 29th before Cournei (o the 

 west of the Nile. 



I was about one hundred and thirty-five or one 

 hundred and forty leagues from Cairo, when I 

 gave over advancing in a southern direction. 



The place where I disembarked was planted 

 with gum acacias. Although the village was 

 not far removed from the river, I requested, and 

 this by the advice of the Scheick of Luxor, the 

 Scheick of Gournei, for whom I also had a letter 

 from IsmdiHf to come himself to the bank of 

 the Nile. He arrived immediately, and con- 

 ducted me to the most pitiful, the most frightful 

 place, from its miserable appearance, which I 

 have yet met with. The huts which compose it, 

 vilely constructed of mud, are not higher than a 

 man, and are merely covered with some branches 

 of the palm-tree. And the men! I never had 

 seen any of so dire an aspect. Half black, the 

 body almost entirely naked, their miserable rags 

 covering only a part of it ; iheir physiognomy 

 gloomy and hagard with ferociousness; following 

 no trade, without taste for agriculture, and, like 

 the savage animals of the parched mountains near 

 v/hich they live, appearing to live solely by rapine; 

 their whole aspect had something terrifying in it. 

 The Arab who represented Lmuin there, had no 



great 



