names of great men who have
passed it in their travels, and some of these names are older than the
time of Christ."

"Got Moses?" asked Miss Adams.

"Auntie, I'm surprised at you!" cried Sadie.

"Well, my dear, he was in Egypt, and he was a great man, and he may have
passed this way."

"Moses's name very likely there, and the same with Herodotus," said
the dragoman, gravely. "Both have been long worn away. But there on
the brown rock you will see Belzoni. And up higher is Gordon. There is
hardly a name famous in the Soudan which you will not find, if you like.
And now, with your permission, we shall take good-bye of our donkeys
and walk up the path, and you will see the river and the desert from the
summit of the top."

A minute or two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular
platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a
perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the
swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the
water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed
through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the
course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very
deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional spoutings of
foam. On the other side was a frightful wilderness of black, scattered
rocks, which were the _debris_ carried down by the river at high flood.
In no direction were there any signs of human beings or their dwellings.

"On the far side," said the dragoman, waving his donkey-whip towards the
east, "is the military line which conducts Wady Haifa to Sarras. Sarras
lies to the south, under that black hill. Those two blue mountains which
you see very far away are in Dongola, more than a hundred miles from
Sarras. The railway there is forty miles long, and has been much annoyed
by the Dervishes, who are very glad to turn the rails into spears. The
telegraph wires are also much appreciated thereby. Now, if you will
kindly turn round, I will explain, also, what we see upon the other
side."

It was a view which, when once seen, must always haunt the mind. Such an
expanse of savage and unrelieved desert might be part of some cold and
burned-out planet rather than of this fertile and bountiful earth. Away
and away it stretched to die into a soft, violet haze in the extremest
distance. In the foreground the sand was of a bright golden yellow,
which was quite dazzling i