he theory
that this has only been of value as a guard-house to the richer country
down below, and that these frequent cities have been so many fortresses
to hold off the wild and predatory men of the south. But whatever be
their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a climatic change,
there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on the hills you
can see the graves of their people, like the port-holes of a man-of-war.
It is through this weird, dead country that the tourists smoke and
gossip and flirt as they pass up to the Egyptian frontier.

The passengers of the _Korosko_ formed a merry party, for most of them
had travelled up together from Cairo to Assouan, and even Anglo-Saxon
ice thaws rapidly upon the Nile. They were fortunate in being without
the single disagreeable person who in these small boats is sufficient to
mar the enjoyment of the whole party. On a vessel which is little more
than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or the grumbler holds
the company at his mercy. But the _Korosko_ was free from anything of
the kind. Colonel Cochrane Cochrane was one of those officers whom the
British Government, acting upon a large system of averages, declares at
a certain age to be incapable of further service, and who demonstrate
the worth of such a system by spending their declining years in
exploring Morocco, or shooting lions in Somaliland. He was a dark,
straight, aquiline man, with a courteously deferential manner, but
a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress and precise in
his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim fingernails. In his
Anglo-Saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a self-contained
manner which was apt at first acquaintance to be repellant, and he
seemed to those who really knew him to be at some pains to conceal
the kind heart and human emotions which influenced his actions. It
was respect rather than affection which he inspired among his
fellow-travellers, for they felt, like all who had ever met him, that
he was a man with whom acquaintance was unlikely to ripen into
a friendship, though a friendship when once attained would be an
unchanging and inseparable part of himself. He wore a grizzled military
moustache, but his hair was singularly black for a man of his years. He
made no allusion in his conversation to the numerous campaigns in which
he had distinguished himself, and the reason usually given for his
reticence was that they dated back to suc