The ancient place of the same name lies half an hour further up the river, and consists but of a few huts. The houses where we landed belong to a number of factories instituted four years ago, in conjunction with the late Ahmed Pasha, by Nureddin Effendi, a Catholic Koptic Egyptian, who has gone over to Islâm, and which yield a rich profit. A simple, honest, un-Oriental German, named Bauer, has erected a soap and brandy factory, which he himself conducts. A sugar and indigo factory is kept by an Arab. Bauer is the southernmost resident European that we have found in Mohammed Ali’s territories, and we were glad to find so excellent a conclusion to the long, little pleasing chain of Europeans, generally deteriorated in civilization, who preferred the government of Turks to their native country.[72] He has an old German housekeeper named Ursula, & funny, good-natured body, for whom it was a no less festal occasion to see German guests than for him. With joyful hurry she got out what European crockery she had, and the forks that were yet in being, and set baked chicken, vegetables, sausages, and excellent wheaten bread before us; at last, too, a cherry pie of baked European cherries (for our fruits do not grow in Egypt), in short, a native meal, such as we had never expected in this _ultima Thule_. Before Bauer’s house we found the most southern Egyptian sculpture that we have seen, on a pedestal, a seated statue of Osiris, somewhat destroyed, done in a late style, in black granite, with the usual attributes, about two and a half feet high, which was discovered in Soba, and is not without interest, as the only monument of Egyptian art from that city.