Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/257

 not even perhaps the Mudîr himself, his prospective host, knew whether certainty was even attainable. The Khedive would not land till a much later hour than had been originally fixed. The Khedive would not land at all. The Khedive would land when his horses arrived. The Khedive's horses had arrived, but he would not land, as he had resolved to receive the notables of Keneh on board his steamer. In the meantime the one thing certain was that the Khedive was actually receiving the notables of Keneh, and that the ceremony promised to last a considerable time. For the best part of two hours an interminable procession of turbaned heads might be seen filing gravely from the bank on to the steamer, along its deck, up one of the stairways to the saloon, and down the other on to the deck again. Ulemas, judges, court officials of the district, Coptic priests, foreign consuls, local merchants, sheiks of the villages—there seemed no end to them.