In passing upwards Captain Light contented himself with one short visit to the temple at Luxor, and with viewing the mass of buildings which formed part of the ancient Apollinopolis Magna through a telescope from the Nile, the hieroglyphics on which he could plainly distinguish, though at the distance of a mile and a half. Elephantina, called Ghezirat-el-Sag, or the 'flowery island,' is described as a perfect paradise.

'It must be confessed that we find beauty by comparison; and this must excuse all travellers in their particular praise of spots, which elsewhere would not, perhaps, call forth their eulogy. Though the season of the year was approaching to the greatest heat, shade was every where to be found amongst the thick plantations of palm-trees, which surrounded and traversed the island. Amongst these the modern habitations showed themselves, whilst the eye often rested on the ancient temples still existing. Every spot was cultivated, and every person employed; none asked for money; and I walked about, greeted by all I met with courteous and friendly salams.

'The intercourse I had with the natives of Assuan was of a very different nature; and in spite of French civilisation and French progeny, which the countenances and complexion of many of the younger part of the inhabitants betrayed, I never received marks of attention without a demand on my generosity.'-pp. 52, 53.

At Phile our traveller first observed the ravages committed by the locusts, of which an immense swarm obscured the sky. In a few hours all the palm-trees were stripped of their foliage, and the ground of its herbage; men, women, and children were vainly employing themselves to prevent these destructive insects from settling; howling repeatedly the name of Geraad, (locust,) throwing sand in the air, beating the ground with sticks, and, at night, in lighting fires-yet they blessed God that he had sent them locusts instead of the plague, which, they observed, always raged at Cairo when these insects made their appearance in Nubia, and which Captain Light says was, in the present instance, actually the case,

At Galabshee the Nile divided itself among several rocks and uninhabited islands; and here Captain Light says he had occasion to remark shells of the oyster kind, attached to the granite masses of these cataracts, similar to those often found in petrifactionswhose presence he attributed to some communication of former times between the Nile and the ocean. At this place the inhabitants were more suspicious, and behaved with more incivility to our traveller than at any other which he had yet passed. They demanded a present before they would allow him to look at their temple. One more violent than the rest,' he says, ' threw dust in the air, the signal both of rage and defiance, ran for his shield, and came towards me dancing, howling, and striking the shield with the head of his javelin,

to intimidate me. A promise of a present pacified him, and enabled me to make my remarks and sketches.'

At Deir Captain Light met with excavations in the rocks, which had evidently been intended as burial places; their sides were covered with hieroglyphics and symbolic figures similar to those in the Temple of Cneph at Elphantina.

The jealousy of the natives, who could not be persuaded I was not influenced by the desire to seek for treasures, prevented me from making those researches that might perhaps have led to the discovery of the connecting character between the hieroglyphic, Coptish, and Greek languages; for it cannot be supposed the two former were dropped at once; and that whilst the custom of preserving the bodies of the dead in the Egyptian manner was continued by the early Christians, there should not be some traces of the language of the people from whom it was copied. Such a discovery may be attempted by some future traveller. The sides of the openings are well finished. On one I traced a cross of this form preceding the following Greek characters:

ANOKIATOEICZAINAI

And on another were these:

+XX пОнH ON

TWN TOricor

ΑΝΤΟΝΙΟΥ

which were the first inscriptions I had seen that appear, connected with Christianity.'-pp. 78, 79.

Beyond this point, and between Ibrîm and Dongola, as we learn from Mr. Burckhardt's journal, the temples, which have been converted into Christian churches, become more frequent, so as to leave little doubt that it was by the line of the Nile that christianity found its way, at so early a period, into Abyssinia; and it certainly will become an interesting object of inquiry for some future traveller, well qualified, to trace its progress from Nubia into that country, where it still holds its ground, though greatly corrupted from its original purity.

From Deir Captain Light proceeded to Ibrîm, where he made a short visit to the aga, a venerable old man, who prayed him, in the true patriarchal style, to tarry till the sun was gone down; to alight, refresh himself, and partake of the food he would prepare for the strangers.' It was served up on a clean mat spread under the shade of the wall of his house, and consisted of wheaten cake broken into small bits, and put into water, sweetened with date-juice, in a wooden bowl; curds with liquid butter, and preserved dates, and a bowl of milk. The aga's house was, like the rest, a mere mud hovel. The people flocked round the stranger, and inquired, as usual, whe

then

ther he came to look for treasure, and whether Christians or Moslems, English or French, were the builders of the temples. Among the superstitions of the natives, which it appears is common in Egypt as well as Nubia, is that of spitting on any diseased part of the body as a certain remedy. At Erment, the ancient Hermontis,' says Captain Light, an old wonran applied to me for medicino for a disease in the eyes, and, on my giving her some directions she did not seem to like, requested me,to spit on her eyes, which I did, and she went away, blessed me, and was well satisfied of the certainty of the cure.'

6

From Ibrîm our traveller returned down the Nile, examined the temple of Seboo, called, by Legh, Sibhoi, and describes its avenues of sphinxes, its gigantic figures in alto-relievo, its pilasters and hieroglyphics.' At Ouffeddonnee he discovered the remains of a primitive Christian church, in the interior of which were many painted Greek inscriptions and figures relating to scriptural subjects. The ruins of a temple at Deboo are minutely described. On the 1st June Captain Light reached Philæ, and thus sums up his observations on the natives of Nubia :

"The people who occupy the shores of the Nile between Phile and Ibrîm are, for the most part, a distinct race from those of the north. The extent of the country is about one hundred and fifty miles; which, according to my course on the Nile up and down, I conceive may be about two hundred by water, and is estimated at much more by Mr. Hamilton and others. They are called by the Egyptians Goobli, meaning in Arabic the people of the south. My boatmen from Boolac applied Goobli generally to them all, but called those living about the cataracts Berber. Their colour is black; but the change to it, in the progress from Cairo, does not occur all at once to the traveller, but by gradual alteration to the dusky hue from white. Their countenance approaches to that of a negro; thick lips, flattish nose and head, the body short, and bones slender: the leg bones have the curve observed in negroes: the hair is curled and black, but not woolly. Men of lighter complexion are found amongst them; which may be accounted for by intermarriage with Arabs, or a descent from those followers of Selim the Second who were left here upon his conquest of the country. On the other hand, at Galabshee the people seemed to have more of the negro than elsewhere; thicker lips, and hair more tufted, as well as a more savage disposition.

The Nubian language is different from the Arabic. The latter, as acquired from books and a teacher, had been of very little use to me in Egypt itself; but here, not even the vulgar dialect of the Lower Nile would serve for common intercourse, except in that district extending from Dukkey to Deir, where the Nubian is lost, and Arabic prevails again: a curious circumstance; and, when considered with an observation of the lighter colour of this people, leads to a belief of their being descended from Arabs. The Nubian, in speaking, gave me an idea of

what

what I have heard of the clucking of Hottentots. It seems a succession of monosyllables, accompanied with a rise and fall of voice that is not disagreeable.

'I saw few traces among them of government, or law, or religion. They know no master, although the cashief claims a nominal command of the country: it extends no farther than sending his soldiers to collect their tax, or rent, called Mirri. The Pasha of Egypt was named as sovereign in all transactions from Cairo to Assuan. Here, and beyond, as far as I went, the reigning Sultan Mahmood was considered the sovereign; though the cashief's was evidently the power they feared the most. They look for redress of injuries to their own means of revenge, which, in cases of blood, extends from one generation to another, till blood is repaid by blood. On this account, they are obliged to be ever on the watch and armed; and, in this manner, even their daily labours are carried on: the very boys go armed. They profess to be the followers of Mahomet, though I rarely happened to observe any of their ritual observances of that religion. Once, upon my endeavouring to make some of them comprehend the benefit of obedience to the rules of justice for punishing offences, instead of pursuing the offender to death as they practised, they quoted the Koran, to justify their requiring blood for blood.

Their dress, for the men, is a linen smock, commonly brown, with red or dark coloured scull cap. A few wear turbans and slippers. The women have a brown robe thrown gracefully over their head and body, discovering the right arm and breast, and part of one thigh and leg. They are of good size and shape, but very ugly in the face. Their necks, arms, and ankles, are ornamented with beads or bone rings, and one nostril with a ring of bone or metal. Their hair is anointed with oil of cassia, of which every village has a small plantation. It is matted or plaited, as now seen in the heads of sphinxes and female figures of their ancient statues. I found one at Elephantina, which might have been supposed their model. Their little children are naked. Girls wear round the waist an apron of strings of raw hide, and boys a girdle of linen.

'Their arms are knives or daggers, fastened to the back of the elbow or in the girdle, javelins, tomahawks, swords of Roman shape, but longer, and slung behind them. Some have round shields of buffalo hide, and a few pistols and muskets are to be seen.'-pp. 93–97.

The Thebaiad has been so often described, that, although every attentive traveller may find something new, the objects are mostly a repetition of what have before been observed-gigantic masses of stone, colossal statues, columns of immense magnitude, and deep caverns, excavated out of the living rock. At Luxor the diameters of some of the columns are upwards of eight feet, and their height forty; and they support masses of stone eighteen feet long and six square, which gives to each a weight from forty-five to fifty tons. Captain Light thus describes Carnac :

'My visit to Carnac, the ancient Diospolis, a ruined temple farther

from

from the banks of the river, on the same side as Luxor, was equally gratifying. It was impossible to look on such an extent of building without being lost in admiration; no description will be able to give an adequate idea of the enormous masses still defying the ravages of time. Enclosure within enclosure, propylæa in front of propylæa; to these, avenues of sphinxes, each of fourteen or fifteen feet in length, lead from a distance of several hundred yards. The common Egyptian sphinx is found in the avenues to the south; but, to the west, the crio sphinx, with the ram's head, from one or two that have been uncovered, seems to have composed its corresponding avenue. Those of the south and east are still buried. Headless statues of grey and blue granite, of gigantic size, lay prostrate in different parts of the ruins. In the western court, in front of the great portico, and at the entrance to this portico, is an upright headless statue of one block of granite, whose size may be imagined from finding that a man of six foot just reaches to the patella of the knee. 'The entrance to the great portico is through a mass of masonry, partly in ruins; through which the eye rests on an avenue of fourteen columns, whose diameter is more than eleven feet, and whose height is upwards of sixty. On each side of this are seven rows, of seven columns in each, whose diameter is eight feet, and about forty feet high, of an architecture which wants the elegance of Grecian models, yet suits the immense majesty of the Egyptian temple.

Though it does not enter into my plan to continue a description which has been been so ably done by others before me, yet, when I say that the whole extent of this temple cannot be less than a mile and a half in circumference, and that the smallest blocks of masonry are five feet by four in depth and breadth, that there are obelisks of eighty feet high on a base of eighteen feet, of one block of granite; it can be easily imagined that Thebes was the vast city history describes it to be.'pp. 105-107.

6

Of the Memnonium and its statues, on the opposite side of the Nile, Captain Light says but little, and that little is incorrect. He is mistaken, for instance, in ascribing to Herodotus the information that the statues of Memnon and his queen were thrown down by the first Cambyses.' Herodotus never once mentions Memnon nor his queen; indeed this is the first time we ever heard of his 'queen' from any author. It is Pausanias, and not Herodotus, who relates the fact of Cambyses having cut down the statue of Memnon; but Strabo says it was thrown down by the shock of an earthquake. Again, in observing that the head of the female, described by Denon in such high terms, and by Mr. Hamilton, might be easily taken away,' he is mistaken in supposing that the latter describes any female head on the Memnonian side of the river. The male and female colossal statues seen by this intelligent traveller at Luxor have no relation to the head which Captain Light thinks 'might easily be taken away,' and which, in fact, has been taken away, and is now lodged in the British Museum.

Denon,