The Nile. 15 



of Queen Victoria and the Khedive. From Assouan a 

 short piece of line took us to Shellal, above the first 

 cataract, and there just opposite the Temple of Philse we 

 embarked upon a steamer, for no railway yet connects 

 Assouan and Wady Haifa. And here the character of the 

 country completely altered. The day before we had 

 travelled through a flat fertile land, whilst now we were 

 steaming up the great river through a wild and desolate 

 country of bare rocky hills with the merest strip of 

 cultivated land by the edge of the river. 



Here and there, however, where flat ground was avail- 

 able between the river bank and the foot of the hills, 

 as for instance at Korosko, cultivation was carried on. 

 But this was only possible with the aid of an elaborate, 

 although primitive, system of irrigation. The sakieh, an 

 endless chain of pitchers, somewhat in the form of a 

 water-wheel, turned by oxen, and the shadoof, a bucket 

 at the end of a long lever balanced by a lump of mud 

 and worked by men, were employed in raising the water 

 from the river above the high bank. Often two sakiehs, 

 or four or five shadoofs one above another, or a com- 

 bination of sakiehs and shadoofs, were necessary to lift 

 the water, so low was the river and so high was the 

 bank. 



Of birds there were few in this reach of the river, but 



B 



