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

194 NATURAL PYRAMIDS.
mous wigs. The men are all armed with long
spears ; hand-clubs made of wood beautifully-
polished and as hard as iron, called Abanos ; long
straight swords of a peculiar form widening to-
wards the point, slung over their back ; small
knives buckled round their left arm ; and large
round bucklers with a boss in the middle, covered
either with crocodile's skin or hippopotamus's
hide. They are a fine, handsome, manly-looking
race, and, although exceedingly dark, have no-
thing of the negro in them— on the contrary,
their heads are very finely formed, and present
what phrenologists would term " well balanced
crania."
The hills on the western side of the river, from
Korosko to Wadi Haifa, are of the most whim-
sical shape you can conceive ; a caprice of Nature,
who, after having created such endless tracts of
monotonous sands, indulged herself in producing
the contrast of these extraordinary elevations.
Many of them are so exactly pyramidical in their
appearance, that at first I believed they must have
been constructions, instead of natural mounds.
Might not the form of these hills have origi-
nally suggested the idea of adopting a similar one
in architecture *?
On the 9th we passed the two temples of lb-