------------------+-----------+------------+----------- Station. |Latitude N.|Longitude E.| Altitude | | |above Sea. ------------------+-----------+------------+----------- | | | metres. | | | Edfu | 24° 58′ | 32° 54′ | 90 | | | Kanais | 25° 0 ′ | 33° 19′ | 205 | | | Gariat Abu Medrik| 24° 55′ | 33° 41′ | 295 | | | Samut | 24° 49′ | 33° 54′ | 340 ------------------+-----------+------------+----------- The next station after Samut appears to have been the ruins near Gebel Dweig. Further on, after passing over the watershed, is another station with two cisterns in a semicircular enclosure. The road continues past Gebel Abu Had to the Wadi Gemal, where there are two more cisterns, this time in a triangular enclosure, and thence up to the Wadi Nugrus and Wadi Sikait to the mines. The Edfu-Sikait road may have joined the Quft-Berenice road at the Wadi Gemal station. A third ancient road is believed to have led northward from Berenice to Qoseir, along the coast; while a fourth, from near Dakka on the Nile up the Wadi Alaqi to the gold mines of the south, is now a regular route to the Nile Valley Company’s mine of Um Gariart. The =ancient emerald mines of Zabara and Sikait= consist of numerous irregular shafts, mostly of no very great depth, excavated in schists of micaceous and talcose types. The =old gold mines=, such as those at Sukari, Um Eleiga, Seiga, Romit, and the Darahib district, are on a considerable scale, excavations having been carried on in quartz veins to fair depths. The dwellings at the mines were for the most part only miserable hovels of rubble stone. A view of those of Um Eleiga is given on Plate IV. The ancient quartz-grinding mills, mostly made of a hard diorite, are frequently found among the ruins of the hovels. There is no clear evidence that any of the mines yielded a very rich output; the workings were of the nature of penal settlements (Prof. Mahaffy[52] has aptly termed them a “tropical Siberia”) in times when life and labour were cheap, and a very moderate yield may under those conditions have been satisfactory.[53] PLATE IV. [Illustration: Ruins of Um Eleiga. Gebel Abu Dahr in the Background.] [Illustration: Ruins in Wadi Shenshef.]