"The head of the statue is twelve feet high, without including the cap or crown that covers it. Compare these figures with the measurements of the broken figure of Rameses at the Memnonium, and you will realize the grandeur of the work. [Illustration: PUBLIC SQUARE AT KHARTOOM.] "The second cataract is more difficult of passage than the first, and can only be accomplished when the Nile is at its full height. Above it the river makes a wide bend, and, as the navigation is difficult, the land route to the Upper Nile is preferable. Travellers leave the Nile at Korosko, nearly a hundred miles below Wady Halfa, and cross the desert to Khartoom. It is a journey of eight days by camels, and there is only one oasis on the route where water can be procured. Khartoom is a town of considerable size--about twenty thousand inhabitants--and has a curiously mixed population of Egyptians, Nubians, Turks, Arabs, and half a dozen other races and tribes. It has a fine trade in ivory, ostrich feathers, and other products of Central Africa, and formerly was the centre of the slave-trade between Egypt and the regions to the south. The situation is said to be quite picturesque, as it is on the angle between the Blue and White Nile, and the boats from both these rivers lie at its banks. "From Khartoom there is good navigation on the Nile for a long distance, till the _Sudd_, or bank of reeds, is reached. The river is blocked by a great mass of aquatic plants, which have drifted down and accumulated so that they cover several miles of the course of the stream. Imagine a small brook in which a load of hay has been overturned, and you have an idea of what the Sudd is like. [Illustration: EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS ON CAMELS.] "Beyond the Sudd the principal town is Gondokoro, in Abyssinia, and as we go farther up the Nile we enter the countries of the savage rulers of Central Africa. You can read about them in the works of Livingstone, Stanley, and other travellers who have gone there, and then--" "Dinner is ready!" said one of the stewards, and the description of Africa by the Doctor was indefinitely postponed. The return voyage to Cairo was quickly made, as the steamer halted but a few times, and then only briefly, at some of the principal points. There was no time for sight-seeing, as all of the visits to temples and tombs were planned for the upward journey. The principal incidents of the trip were a few slight quarrels among the passengers, growing out of the general lack of something to do, and a glimpse of a crocodile. Everybody had been on the lookout for crocodiles during the voyage up the river, but none had been seen. The presence of these inhabitants of the Nile had been nearly forgotten, when suddenly one afternoon somebody on deck called out, "Crocodile!"