The governor, the mudîr, and the idle man then parted with a profusion of compliments; the governor protesting that his only wish was to be agreeable to the English, and that the whole village should have been bastinadoed had his excellency desired it. * * * * * We spent eight enchanted days at Philæ, and it so happened, when the afternoon of the eighth came round, that for the last few hours the writer was alone on the island. Alone, that is to say, with only a sailor in attendance, which was virtually solitude; and Philæ is a place to which solitude adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness. It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. My last sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to spot, saying farewell to Pharaoh’s bed--to the painted columns--to the terrace, and palm, and shrine, and familiar point of view. I peep once again into the mystic chamber of Osiris. I see the sun set for the last time from the roof of the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of rose and gold has died away, comes the warm after-glow. No words can paint the melancholy beauty of Philæ at this hour. The surrounding mountains stand out jagged and purple against a pale amber sky. The Nile is glassy. Not a breath, not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape. Every palm is twofold; every stone is doubled. The big bowlders in mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to tell where the rock ends and the water begins. The temples, meanwhile, have turned to a subdued golden bronze; and the pylons are peopled with shapes that glow with fantastic life, and look ready to step down from their places. The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in the air. I hear a mother crooning to her baby on the neighboring island--a sparrow twittering in its little nest in the capital of a column below my feet--a vulture screaming plaintively among the rocks in the far distance. I look; I listen; I promise myself that I will remember it all in years to come--all the solemn hills, these silent colonnades, these deep, quiet spaces of shadow, these sleeping palms. Lingering till it is all but dark, I at last bid them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no more. CHAPTER XX. SILSILIS AND EDFU. Going, it cost us four days to struggle up from Assûan to Mahatta; returning, we slid down--thanks to our old friend the sheik of the cataract--in one short, sensational half-hour. He came--flat-faced, fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever--with his head tied up in the same old yellow handkerchief, and with the same chibouque in his mouth. He brought with him a following of fifty stalwart shellalees; and under his arm he carried a tattered red flag. This flag, on which were embroidered the crescent and star, he hoisted with much solemnity at the prow.