But that is in virtue of an equitable and logical principle, derived by them from the high places of the new administration--namely, that the Egypt of to-day belongs far less to the Egyptians than to the noble foreigners who have come to brandish there the torch of civilisation.
In the evening, after dark, the really respectable travellers do not quit the brilliant dining saloons of the hotels, and the quay is left quite solitary beneath the stars.

It is at such a time that one is able to realise how extremely hospitable certain of the natives are become.
If, in an hour of melancholy, you walk alone on the bank of the Nile, smoking a cigarette, you will not fail to be accosted by one of these good people, who misunderstanding the cause of the unrest in your soul, offers eagerly, and with a touching frankness, to introduce you to the gayest of the young ladies of the country.
In the other towns, which still remain purely Egyptian, the people would never practise such an excess of affability and good manners, which have been learnt, beyond all question from our beneficent contact.
Assouan possesses also its little Oriental bazaar--a little improvised, a little new perhaps; but then one, at least, was needed, and that as quickly as possible, in order that nothing might be wanting to the tourists.
The shopkeepers have contrived to provision themselves (in the leading shops, under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli) with as much tact as good taste, and the Cook ladies have the innocent illusion of making bargains every day.

One may even buy there, hung up by the tail, stuffed with straw and looking extremely real, the last crocodiles of Egypt, which, particularly at the end of the season, may be had at very advantageous prices.
Even the old Nile has allowed itself to be fretted and brought up to date in the progress of evolution.
First, the women, draped in black veils, who come daily to draw the precious water, have forsaken the fragile amphorae of baked earth, which had come to them from barbarous times--and which the Orientalists grossly abused in their picture; and in their stead have taken to old tin oil-cans, placed at their disposal by the kindness of the big hotels.

But they carry them in the same easy graceful manner as erstwhile the discarded pottery, and without losing in the least the gracious tanagrine outline.
And then there are the great tourist boats of the Agencies, which are here in abundance, for Assouan has the privilege of being the terminus of the line; and their whistlings, their revolving motors, their electric dynamos maintain from morning till night a captivating symphony.

It might be urged perhaps against these structures that they resemble a little the washhouses on the Seine; but the Agencies, desirous of restoring to them a certain local colour, have given them names so notoriously Egyptian that one is reduced to silence.