banks.

One's first thought is one of sadness, for everywhere the tree-tops,
often barely showing above water, seem to mourn the little villages
and graveyards which lie below, and as yet no fresh verdure has
appeared to give the banks the life and beauty they formerly had.

As at the cataract, here also the hills are simply jumbled heaps of
granite boulders, fantastically piled one upon the other, barren and
naked, and without any vegetable growth to soften their forbidding
wildness.

On many rocky islands are the ruined mud buildings of the Romans, and
more than one village, once populous, lies deserted and abandoned upon
some promontory which is now surrounded by the flood.

Though a general sense of mournfulness pervades it, the scenery has
much variety and beauty, nor have all the villages been destroyed;
many had already been built far above the present water-level, while
others have sprung up to take the place of those submerged. These
again present new features to the traveller, for, unlike many we have
seen below the cataract, these Nubian dwellings are well built, the
mud walls being neatly smoothed and often painted. The roofs are
peculiar, being in the form of well-constructed semicircular arches,
all of mud, and in many cases the tops of the outside walls are
adorned by a kind of balustrade of open brickwork.

Half hidden among the rocks the native house has often the appearance
of some temple pylon, and seems to fit the landscape in a peculiar
way, for no form of building harmonizes so well with the Egyptian