Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/248

 to the theatrical coup d'œil. From water's edge to summit it ascends for some ten or twelve yards at an angle apparently steeper than forty-five degrees. To pack it with a European crowd would be impossible; the European boot and shoe, if nothing else, would forbid it. The naked and almost prehensile foot of the Egyptian fellah can only just manage to maintain him on the slope and no more; and inasmuch as the dry soil breaks away beneath him almost every other minute in a cloud of dust, continual readjustments of his position are necessary to keep him from slipping gradually into the Nile. It would be difficult for the most powerful imagination to conceive a situation of more hideous discomfort; yet for three mortal hours did the crowd occupy it, on and off, clinging to it as long as possible, and returning to it whenever the coercion, professional or amateur, which was from time to time applied to them, relaxed even for a moment. For a space of some fifty yards along the