ides by
the mountains of the desert. It was at the bottom of this granite circus
that the Nile used to flow, forming fresh islets, on which the eternal
verdure of the palm-trees contrasted with the high desolate mountains
that surrounded it like a wall. To-day, on account of the barrage
established by the English, the water has steadily risen, like a tide
that will never recede; and this lake, almost a little sea, replaces
the meanderings of the river and has succeeded in submerging the sacred
islets. The sanctuary of Isis--which was enthroned for thousands of
years on the summit of a hill, crowded with temples and colonnades and
statues--still half emerges; but it is alone and will soon go the way
of the others, There it is, beyond, like a great rock, at this hour in
which the night begins to obscure everything.

Nowhere but in Upper Egypt have the winter nights these transparencies
of absolute emptiness nor these sinister colourings. As the light
gradually fails, the sky passes from copper to bronze, but remains
always metallic. The zenith becomes brownish like a brazen shield, while
the setting sun alone retains its yellow colour, growing slowly paler
till it is almost of the whiteness of latten; and, above, the mountains
of the desert edge their sharp outlines with a tint of burnt sienna.
To-night a freezing wind blows fiercely in our faces. To the continual
chant of the rowers we pass slowly over the artificial lake, which is
upheld as it were in the air by the English masonry, invisible now in
the distance, but divined nevertheless and revolting. A sacrilegious
lake one might call it, since it hides beneath its troubled waters ruins
beyond all price; temples of the gods of Egypt, churches of the first
centuries of Christianity, obelisks, inscriptions and emblems. It is
over these things that we now pass, while the spray splashes in our
faces, and the foam of a thousand angry little billows.

We draw near to what was once the holy isle. In places dying palm-trees,
whose long trunks are to-day under water, still show their moistened
plumes and give an appearance of inundation, almost of cataclysm.

Before coming to the sanctuary of Isis, we touch at the kiosk of Philae,
which has been reproduced in the pictures of every age, and is as
celebrated even as the Sphinx and the pyramids. It used to stand on
a pedestal of high rocks, and around it the date-trees swayed their
bouquets of aerial palms. To-day it has no lon