At Assûan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless Ethiopians and found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of five miles of cataract we had crossed five hundred miles of sea or desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning, we plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region. All day long, now, we see boats on the river; villages on the banks; birds on the wing; husbandmen on the land; men and women, horses, camels and asses, passing perpetually to and fro on the towing-path. There is always something moving, something doing. The Nile is running low and the shâdûfs--three deep, now--are in full swing from morning till night. Again the smoke goes up from clusters of unseen huts at close of day. Again we hear the dogs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours of the night. Again, toward sunset, we see troops of girls coming clown to the river side with their water-jars on their heads. Those Arab maidens, when they stand with garments tightly tucked up and just their feet in the water, dipping the goolah at arm’s length in the fresher gush of the current, almost tempt one’s pencil into the forbidden paths of caricature. Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once as Denderah--perhaps larger; for, being on the same grand scale, it was a double temple and dedicated to two gods, Horus and Sebek;[175] the hawk and the crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns, buried to within eight or ten feet of their gorgeous capitals; a superb fragment of architrave; one broken wave of sculptured cornice and some fallen blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras. A great double doorway, a hall of columns and a double sanctuary are said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing-blocks of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible behind the portico. What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know that an ancient city and a mediæval hamlet have been slowly engulfed; and that an early temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred inclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually sapping the bank and carrying away piecemeal from below what the desert has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon--a cataract of sculptured blocks--strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer. A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down like its fellow.