One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river in a big boat full of women and girls, who are clapping their hands and shrilling the tremulous zagharett. The bride--a chocolate beauty with magnificent eyes--wears a gold brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly plaited in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mud pellets daubed with yellow ocher. She stands surrounded by her companions, proud of her finery, and pleased to be stared at by the Ingleezeh. About this time, also, we see one night a wild sort of festival going on for some miles along both sides of the river. Watch-fires break out toward twilight, first on this bank, then on that; becoming brighter and more numerous as the darkness deepens. By and by, when we are going to bed, we hear sounds of drumming on the eastern bank, and see from afar a torchlight procession and dance. The effect of this dance of torches--for it is only the torches that are visible--is quite diabolic. The lights flit and leap as if they were alive; circling, clustering, dispersing, bobbing, poussetting, pursuing each other at a gallop, and whirling every now and then through the air, like rockets. Late as it is, we would fain put ashore and see this orgy more nearly; but Reïs Hassan shakes his head. The natives hereabout are said to be quarrelsome; and if, as it is probable, they are celebrating the festival of some local saint, we might be treated as intruders. Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our way up to the temple, which is excavated in the face of a limestone cliff, a couple of hundred feet, perhaps, above the river. A steep path, glaring hot in the sun, leads to a terrace in the rock; the temple being approached through the ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. It is a gloomy place within--an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel; and of the same date. It consists of a first hall supported by osiride pillars, a second and smaller hall with square columns, a smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. The osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick-set, bow-legged, and misshapen. Their faces would seem to have been painted black originally; while those of the avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors; just as at Abou Simbel one recognizes the master-style of the artists of the Theban Ramesseum.