The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-06-24

regarded by the contingent from Greai
Britain. If our conduct had been ex
emplary we could not have cleared
away this suspicion, but after the dom
mo debauch we were set down as hope
less. The middle class English guard
their social status very carefully, and
you can't blame them. 1t is tender
and uncertain growth that requires
looking after all the time. IL they
didn't water 1t and prune 1t and sci
! 1t out in the sunshine every day II
would soon wither back to its original
stalk.
| Did you ever come across bunch oil
melancholy pilgrims from the subur-
ban villas and the dull gray provincial
towns of dear old England? Did you
ever observe the frightened manner
In which they hold aloof from Ger.
mans, Americans. Bedouins, Turks and
other foreigners? They fear that if
! they drift into friendly relationship
with people they meet while travelling,
later on some of these chance ac-
quaintances may look them up at Biz
mingham or Stoke-on-Trent and ex-
pect to be entertained at the foundry
A large majority Of our fellow-pas-
sengers from Luxor to Assouan were
of elderly pattern. We estimated the
average to be about eighty-three. Mr..
| reasley said an irreverent thing about
these venerable tourists.
why do these people come all the
| way to Egypt to look at the ruins? %
| he asked. "Why don't they stay at
home and look at one another?"
We rebuked him for saying 1t, but
somehow or other these rebukes never
| seemed to have any permanent re-
straining effect.
Our boat arrived at Assouan one
| morning accompanied by sand storm
and cold wave. The Cataract hotel
stood on a promontory overlooking a
| new kind of Nile-a swift and narrow
stream studded with cleaning bowl
| ders of granite. We liked Assouan
| because the weather was ideal (after
| tie sand storm ran out OF sand), tho
| ;otel was the best we had found in
| Egypt, and mere were so few antiques
| that sightseeing became a pleasure.
Besides, after one has been to Luxor
Anything in the way Of ancient temples
| is about as much Of comedown as
turkey hash the day after Thanksgiy-
| ing.
Here, on the border of Nubia, we
| began to get glimpses of real Africa.
We rode on camels to desert camp
| of hilarious Bisharins. They are the
gypsies Of Nubia-dress their hair with
mud instead of bas rum and reside
under a patch of gunnysack propped
up by two sticks. On the hills back
| of the town we saw the barracks
where the English army gathered IL
self to move south against the Man
dists. We were invited to go out in
/ the moonlight and hunt hyena, but
did not think it right to kill off all
the native game.
The big exhibit at Assouan and one
Of the great engineering achievements
| of modern times is the dam across
| the Nile. It is a solid wall of granite,
mile and a quarter long, 100 feet
| high in places and So feet through
the base, and 1t looks larger than it
sounds. We went across it on push
car after taking boat ride in the
| reservoir basin, which is said to con-
| tain 234,000,000 gallons of water. This
estimate.is correct as nearly as we
could figure it. The dam is about four
miles above the town. We rode up on
a dummy train, with cars almost as
large as Saratoga trunks, and came
back in small boat. We shot the
rapids, just for excitement, and after
we had caved in the bottom of the boat
| and stopped an hour for repairs we
| decided that we had stored up enough