If a traveler pressed for time asked me whether he should or should not go as far as the second cataract, I think I should recommend him to turn back from Abou Simbel. The trip must cost four days; and if the wind should happen to be unfavorable either way, it may cost six or seven. The forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the dullest on the Nile; the cataract is but an enlarged and barren edition of the cataract between Assûan and Philæ; and the great view, as I have said, has not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist. It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of beauty. It rouses one’s imagination to a sense of the greatness of the Nile. We look across a world of desert, and see the river still coming from afar. We have reached a point at which all that is habitable and familiar comes abruptly to an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not a shâdûf, not a sakkieh, is to be seen in the plain below. There is no sail on those dangerous waters. There is no moving creature on those pathless sands. But for the telegraphic wires stalking, ghostlike, across the desert, it would seem as if we had touched the limit of civilization, and were standing on the threshold of a land unexplored. Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the beginning of the mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a thousand miles against the stream; but what is that to the distance which still lies between us and the great lakes? And how far beyond the great lakes must we seek for the source that is even yet undiscovered? We stayed at Wady Halfeh but one night and paid but one visit to the cataract. We saw no crocodiles, though they are still plentiful among these rocky islets. The M. B.’s, who had been here a week, were full of crocodile stories and of Alfred’s deeds of arms. He had stalked and shot a monster, two days before our arrival; but the creature had rushed into the water when hit, waving its tail furiously above its head, and had neither been seen nor heard of since. Like Achilles, the crocodile has but one vulnerable spot; and this is a small unarmored patch behind the forearm. He will take a good deal of killing even there, unless the bullet finds its way to a vital part, or is of the diabolical kind called “explosive.” Even when mortally wounded, he seldom drops on the spot. With his last strength, he rushes to the water and dies at the bottom. After three days the carcass rises and floats, and our friends were now waiting in order that Alfred might bag his big game. Too often, however, the poor brute either crawls into a hole, or, in his agony, becomes entangled among weeds and comes up no more. For one crocodile bagged, a dozen regain the river, and, after lingering miserably under water, die out of sight and out of reach of the sportsman.