A number of boats are ready: for the tourists allured by many advertisements flock hither every winter in docile herds.

All the boats, without a single exception, are profusely decorated with little English flags, as if for some regatta on the Thames.

There is no escape therefore from this beflagging of a foreign holiday--and we set out with a homesick song of Nubia, which the boatmen sing to the cadence of the oars.
The copper-coloured heaven remains so impregnated with cold light that we still see clearly.

We are amid magnificent tragic scenery on a lake surrounded by a kind of fearful amphitheatre outlined on all sides by the mountains of the desert.

It was at the bottom of this granite circus that the Nile used to flow, forming fresh islets, on which the eternal verdure of the palm-trees contrasted with the high desolate mountains that surrounded it like a wall.