Egypt -- Description and travel; Egypt -- History -- 19th century; Nile River -- Description and travel
Rameses the Great (Bayt-el-Welly) 260
Rameses the Great (Abydus) 260
Rameses the Great (Abou Simbel) 260
Profile of Rameses II (from the Southernmost Colossus; Abou
Simbel) 261
Ground-plan 307
Pattern of Cornice 308
Standard of Horus Aroëris 309
Rameses II of Speos 311
Temple of Amada (Wall Inscription) 313
Heraldic Inscription (North Wall of Speos) 317
Goddess Ta-ur-t (Silsilis) 359
Goddess Ta-ur-t (Philæ) 359
Vases and Goblets (Medinet Habu) 385
Prince Ra-Hotep and Princess Nefer-t 439
A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.
CHAPTER I.
CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID.
It is the traveler’s lot to dine at many table-d’hôtes in the course of
many wanderings; but it seldom befalls him to make one of a more
miscellaneous gathering than that which overfills the great dining-room
at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo during the beginning and height of the
regular Egyptian season. Here assemble daily some two to three hundred
persons of all ranks, nationalities, and pursuits; half of whom are
Anglo-Indians homeward or outward bound, European residents, or visitors
established in Cairo for the winter. The other half, it may be taken for
granted, are going up the Nile. So composite and incongruous is this
body of Nile-goers, young and old, well-dressed and ill-dressed, learned
and unlearned, that the new-comer’s first impulse is to inquire from
what motives so many persons of dissimilar tastes and training can be
led to embark upon an expedition which is, to say the least of it, very
tedious, very costly, and of an altogether exceptional interest.
His curiosity, however, is soon gratified. Before two days are over, he
knows everybody’s name and everybody’s business; distinguishes at first
sight between a Cook’s tourist and an independent traveler; and has
discovered that nine-tenths of those whom he is likely to meet up the
river are English or American. The rest will be mostly German, with a
sprinkling of Belgian and French. So far _en bloc_; but the details are
more heterogeneous still. Here are invalids in search of health; artists
in search of subjects; sportsmen keen upon crocodiles; statesmen out for
a holiday; special correspondents alert for gossip; collectors on the
scent of papyri and mummies; men of science with only scientific ends
in view; and the usual surplus of idlers who travel for the mere love of
travel or the satisfaction of a purposeless curiosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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