Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/247

 Probably enough it is one of the largest Egyptian gatherings ever got together outside, or at least at any distance from, the walls of a great city. Oriental hyperbole puts it down in our hearing at forty thousand; but in all likelihood the speaker had never himself seen one-fifth of that number gathered together. Keneh, to be sure, is no "one-horse" place, as Egyptian townships go. It is the capital town of a district, and contains from fifteen to twenty thousand souls. If we suppose all its adult males to have turned out—there is, of course, only the merest sprinkling of women—and their strength to have been doubled by the recruits from the surrounding villages, we shall still be safe in halving the estimate given above. Nevertheless, there are enough of them within eyeshot, and, as we know to our cost, within earshot of us to make not merely a good show but an extraordinary and even bewildering spectacle.

The bank of the river lends itself admirably