The native Christians, meanwhile, would seem to have relapsed into a state of semi-barbarism. They make perpetual inroads upon the Arab frontier and suffer perpetual defeat. Battles are fought; tribute is exacted; treaties are made and broken. Toward the close of the thirteenth century, their king being slain and their churches plundered, they lose one-fourth of their territory, including all that part which borders upon Assûan. Those who remain Christians are also condemned to pay an annual capitation tax, in addition to the usual tribute of dates, cotton, slaves and camels. After this we may conclude that they accepted Islamism from the Arabs, as they had accepted Osiris from the Egyptians and Christ from the Romans. As Christians, at all events, we hear of them no more; for Christianity in Nubia perished root and branch, and not a Copt, it is said, may now be found above the frontier. Philæ was still inhabited in A.D. 1799, when a detachment of Desaix’s army under General Beliard took possession of the island and left an inscription[62] on the soffit of the doorway of the great pylon to commemorate the passage of the cataract. Denon, describing the scene with his usual vivacity, relates how the natives first defied and then fled from the French; flinging themselves into the river, drowning such of their children as were too young to swim and escaping into the desert. They appear at this time to have been mere savages--the women ugly and sullen, the men naked, agile and quarrelsome, and armed not only with swords and spears, but with matchlock guns, with which they used to keep up “a brisk and well-directed fire.” Their abandonment of the island probably dates from this time; for when Burckhardt went up in A.D. 1813, he found it, as we found it to this day, deserted and solitary. One poor old man--if indeed he still lives--is now the one inhabitant of Philæ; and I suspect he only crosses over from Biggeh in the tourist-season. He calls himself, with or without authority, the guardian of the island; sleeps in a nest of rags and straw in a sheltered corner behind the great temple; and is so wonderfully wizened and bent and knotted up that nothing of him seems quite alive except his eyes. We gave him fifty copper paras[63] for a parting present when on our way back to Egypt; and he was so oppressed by the consciousness of wealth that he immediately buried his treasure and implored us to tell no one what we had given him.