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 obliged to maintain him, he requested they would keep for him until his return. They then parted.

At Assuan, which he next day reached, he was very politely entertained by the Turkish aga, who had received instructions from the bey to behave respectfully towards the stranger. From thence he proceeded, on beasts furnished by the aga, to the cataracts. On leaving the town they passed over a small sandy plain, where there were numerous tombs with Arabic inscriptions in the Kufic character; and after riding about five miles farther, arrived at the cataracts. The fall of the waters is here so inconsiderable that vessels are able to pass up and down; but the bed of the river, which may perhaps be about half a mile in breadth, is divided into numerous small channels by enormous blocks of granite, from thirty to forty feet in height. Against these the river, running over a sloping bottom, through a channel of insufficient breadth, dashes with extreme noise and violence, and is thrown back in foam and a thousand whirling eddies, which, eternally mingling with each other, produce a disturbed and chaotic appearance which fills the mind with confusion.

On the 26th of January, after much altercation with his host, he embarked in his kanja, and began to descend the river. Having reached Badjoura, he employed himself until the departure of the caravan, with which he was to cross the desert to Kosseir, in examining the observations he had made, and in preparing his journal for publication; in order that, should he perish, the labours he had already achieved might not be lost. This done, he forwarded them to his friends at Cairo till he should return, or news should arrive that he was otherwise disposed of.

On the 16th of February the caravan set out from Ghena (the Cæne Emporium of antiquity), and proceeded over plains of inconceivable sterility towards the Red Sea. "The sun," says Bruce, "was burning hot, and, upon rubbing two sticks together, in