A sacrilegious lake one might call it, since it hides beneath its troubled waters ruins beyond all price; temples of the gods of Egypt, churches of the first centuries of Christianity, obelisks, inscriptions and emblems.

It is over these things that we now pass, while the spray splashes in our faces, and the foam of a thousand angry little billows.
We draw near to what was once the holy isle.

In places dying palm-trees, whose long trunks are to-day under water, still show their moistened plumes and give an appearance of inundation, almost of cataclysm.
Before coming to the sanctuary of Isis, we touch at the kiosk of Philae, which has been reproduced in the pictures of every age, and is as celebrated even as the Sphinx and the pyramids.

It used to stand on a pedestal of high rocks, and around it the date-trees swayed their bouquets of aerial palms.

To-day it has no longer a base; its columns rise separately from this kind of suspended lake.