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

WADI HALFA. 195
samboul, and as the breeze was both brisk and
fair, we wouhl not tarry, but contented ourselves
for the moment with a passing coup d'ceil of their
stupendous facades cut out of the living rock, (for
those far-famed sanctuaries of the Egyptian dei-
ties are excavations and not constructions). Four
sitting giants guard the portals of the great
temple, and six standing figures of smaller di-
mensions, but still colossal, those of the lesser
one. The appearance of those gigantic sculp-
tures in this far solitude, surrounded and sur-
mounted by the rude rock of which they form a
part, is truly extraordinary. Around them no-
thing is to be seen but the barren sands of the
desert, before them the ever-flowing river ! No
city could ever have existed on this spot. What
manner of people were they, who could have pro-
digally created such magnificent efforts of human
labour and art in such a solitude ?
This morning, the 10th of December, and ex-
actly one month since our departure from Cairo,
we anchored at Wadi Haifa, the extreme point
of our peregrinations, and the threshold as it
were, of the Second Cataract. We have now fol-
lowed the course of the Nile for a thousand miles
from Alexandria to this place, and not one tribu-
tary stream has fallen into the great river during