360 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



raents dating from the oldest dynasties of Egyptian kings, that is 

 to say from two or three thousand years before the Christian era, 

 make repeated mention of "Sun", and countless other hieroglyphics 

 in the adjacent quarries testify to the importance of this industrial 

 village. These quarries extend over many square miles of the desert 

 to the east of the cataract. From them were hewn those immense 

 blocks which form the columns, obelisks, cornices, and lintels of 

 the temples, and fill us with wonder and admiration. With them, 

 too, the ancients roofed in the sepulchral chambers of the pyramids, 

 -confident that they would bear the stupendous burden piled above 

 them. "All around us here", says my learned friend Diimichen, 

 " we see how human hands laboured to loosen the valuable stone 

 from the wall of rock, and to immortalize this or that event in 

 sculpture or inscription. Everywhere the rock has become a 

 memorial of the past, and numerous inscriptions, often on the 

 highest peaks of the mountains, proclaim the glory of the divine 

 trinity worshipped by the first province of Upper Egypt — the 

 Cataract-god Chnum-Ra, and his two consorts Sati and Anuke — or 

 ■celebrate the exploits of Egyptian kings and high officers of state. 

 Some of these go back to the oldest historic times, and yet how 

 young they seem in comparison with the work, which through 

 innumerable ages the Egyptian Sun-god Ra has wrought upon the 

 stone. For the rocks, all around which are as yet untouched by 

 human hand, present to us a surface covered with a dark crust 

 gleaming like enamel; while the cut surfaces of the syenite (to 

 many of which we may certainly ascribe an age of four thousand 

 years) still show, like the blocks in the quarries, the character- 

 istic red of the granite in its pristine vividness — they are still too 

 young to show the impress of Time's hand." 



From any of the higher peaks on the banks one can get a survey 

 of a part of the cataract. Two deserts meet at the Nile, and join 

 hands across it by means of hundreds of small rocky islands. Every 

 island splits the stream, forcing it into a narrower channel, through 

 which, however, it rushes all the more violently, ceaselessly 

 dashing against the ruins of the rocky barrier through which it 

 burst hundreds of thousands of years ago. The river seems to be 



