A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

134 A RIDE.
and chocolate bonbons, all of them articles rarely
to be obtained in Upper Egypt.
Finding that the Sheikh's horse had orders to
remain in waiting as long as the Dahabieh should
be stationary, I could not resist the temptation of
trying his paces, so up I got on the fine velvet
and gold housings, (to the visible consternation of
our good Reis Ali, who had never before seen a
woman sit sideways on horse-back, and would not
quit my side lest I should fall, but there was no
danger of that, as the Sheikh's saddle was so con-
structed as very much to resemble a pillion,) and
away I went to get a distant glimpse of the town,
which is not to be seen from the Nile. It was
the period of the annual fair of Kenneh, which is
held near the banks of the river, at some distance
from the town, but a most wretched affair it ap-
peared to me. I had imagined, as Kenneh is the
Egyptian depot for all the merchandize coming
from Mecca and the Red Sea, that I should have
met with something worth buying from those
places, but nothing was to be seen in the booths
but pipe-bowls and those porous earthen bottles
used all over Egypt for cooling water. Kenneh
is celebrated throughout the East for the manu-
facture of both of those articles ; the water-bottles
are packed upon enormous rafts and floated down