A TOWN PROMPTLY EMBELLISHED Eight years and a line of railway have sufficed to accomplish its metamorphosis.

Once in Upper Egypt, on the borders of Nubia, there was a little humble town, rarely visited, and wanting, it must be owned, in elegance and even in comfort.
Not that it was without picturesqueness and historical interest.

Quite the contrary.

The Nile, charged with the waters of equatorial Africa, flung itself close by from the height of a mass of black granite, in a majestic cataract; and then, before the little Arab houses, became suddenly calm again, and flowed between islets of fresh verdure where clusters of palm-trees swayed their plumes in the wind.
And around were a number of temples, of hypogea, of Roman ruins, of ruins of churches dating from the first centuries of Christianity.

The ground was full of souvenirs of the great primitive civilisations.