A few scattered houses, a line of blank wall, the top of a minaret, the dark mouths of one or two gloomy alleys, are all that one sees of the town from the mooring-place below. The black bowlders close against the shore, some of which are superbly hieroglyphed, glisten in the sun like polished jet.[46] The beach is crowded with bales of goods; with camels laden and unladen; with turbaned figures coming and going; with damaged cargo-boats lying up high and dry, and half heeled over, in the sun. Others, moored close together, are taking in or discharging cargo. A little apart from these lie some three or four dahabeeyahs flying English, American, and Belgian flags. Another has cast anchor over the way at Elephantine. Small rowboats cross and recross, meanwhile, from shore to shore; dogs bark; camels snort and snarl; donkeys bray; and clamorous curiosity dealers scream, chatter, hold their goods at arm’s length, battle and implore to come on board, and are only kept off the landing-plank by means of two big sticks in the hands of two stalwart sailors. The things offered for sale at Assûan are altogether new and strange. Here are no scarabæi, no funerary statuettes, no bronze or porcelain gods, no relics of a past civilization; but, on the contrary, such objects as speak only of a rude and barbarous present--ostrich eggs and feathers, silver trinkets of rough Nubian workmanship, spears, bows, arrows, bucklers of rhinoceros hide, ivory bracelets, cut solid from the tusk, porcupine quills, baskets of stained and plaited reeds, gold nose rings and the like. One old woman has a Nubian lady’s dressing-case for sale--an uncouth, fetich-like object with a cushion for its body, and a top-knot of black feathers. The cushion contains two kohl-bottles, a bodkin and a bone comb. But the noisest dealer of the lot is an impish boy blessed with the blackest skin and the shrillest voice ever brought together in one human being. His simple costume consists of a tattered shirt and a white cotton skull-cap; his stock in trade of a greasy leather fringe tied to the end of a stick. Flying from window to window of the saloon on the side next the shore, scrambling up the bows of a neighboring cargo-boat so as to attack us in the rear, thrusting his stick and fringe in our faces whichever way we turn, and pursuing us with eager cries of “Madame Nubia! Madame Nubia!” he skips and screams and grins like an ubiquitous goblin, and throws every competitor into the shade.