Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/222

 three weeks we have spent upon the river there was a general muster of the whole strength of our steamers passengers to assist at these magnificent obsequies. Hardly upon a single night of the whole twenty did they disappoint us, and the brilliancy and richness of the colours on which, night after night, we feasted our eyes were not more extraordinary than their inexhaustible variety of scheme. There is not a colour-tube in the artist's paint-box which would not, on one evening or another, have been called into requisition, and there is scarcely one which he would not have found himself mixing on his palette into some new and exquisite combination with another. The hues of the western horizon at the actual moment of the sun's disappearance below it might, no doubt, except in point of intensity, be matched in a colder sky. In England, under fortunate conditions, one has often seen a blaze of sunset glory which it is impossible to outdo, and which no southern or tropical clime could do more