We would have given much to trace the river to its source and search for this unknown temple in the desert. But it is one of the misfortunes of this kind of traveling that one cannot easily turn aside from the beaten track. The hot season is approaching; the river is running low; the daily cost of the dahabeeyah is exorbitant; and, in Nubia, where little or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory traveler risks starvation. It was something, however, to have seen with one’s own eyes that the Nile, instead of flowing for a distance of twelve hundred miles unfed by any affluent, had here received the waters of a tributary.[157] To those who have a south breeze behind them the temples must now follow in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees and rejoiced when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh--in itself a dull ruin but picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank on landing, two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up against the sky, supporting a ruined entablature. In the foreground a few stunted Dôm palms starve in an arid soil. The barren desert closes in the distance. We are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-looking men and boys and impudent girls with long frizzy hair and Nubian fringes, who pester us with beads and pebbles; dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their hands in our faces; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged warrior brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six feet long in the barrel; and some of the others carry slender spears. The temple--a late Roman structure--would seem to have been wrecked by an earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the rough--pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out, waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins--of which every stone looks new, as if the work was still in progress--affect one’s imagination strangely. On a fallen wall south of the portico[158] the idle man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; but for hieroglyphic characters or cartouches, by which to date the building, we looked in vain.[159] Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor and Kalebsheh. Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise we find the whole population--screaming, pushing, chattering, laden with eggs, pigeons and gourds for sale--drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in the way here, so we moor about a mile above the temple.