substance from which the Egyptians made their scrolls, whereon most of their writing was done, and it is from 'papyrus' that our modern word 'paper' is derived.

"The plant that we saw was a small one, or rather there was a little cluster of small plants growing in a pond among other aquatic products. It is uncertain whether the papyrus ever grew naturally in this part of Egypt; at all events, it is not easy to find it at present, except where it is artificially cultivated. In Abyssinia and farther up the Nile the papyrus

grows in marshy ground, and sometimes little else can be seen for miles and miles. It has a mass of roots that spread out in the mud, and throw up a cluster of stalks from five to ten feet high. The plant is a very graceful one, and it is no wonder that the Egyptians made free use of it in their ornamentation.

"In making paper from the papyrus plant the Egyptians used to cut it into thin slices, which they laid side by side, and then covered with other slices at right angles to the first. In this form it was slightly moistened and pressed down, and the sheet could be made of any size by

THE ORIGIN OF PAPER.

251

simply extending it and connecting the edges. It was used for many other purposes than the manufacture of paper: boats, baskets, and boxes. were made from the papyrus plant; cordage was spun from the fibres, the pith was eaten as food, a salve was made from the pulp and applied to sores, and the roots were burnt as fuel in houses, or fashioned into useful or ornamental articles. Altogether the papyrus seems to have been nearly as useful to the inhabitants of Egypt three thousand years ago as the bamboo is to the native of China and Japan to-day.

"Wherever there was space to scratch or write a name on the walls, we found that previous travellers had not scrupled to convert the Temple

of Philæ into an autograph album. Names of those who had come there in the last two hundred years were visible in great numbers; the most prominent memorial of this kind was a tablet recording the occupation of Phil by General Desaix's army at the time Egypt was held by Napoleon I.

This tablet was defaced by some Englishmen in 1848, but was afterward restored by French visitors, and has since been undisturbed.

"When it was time to leave the island we again entered our boat, and were taken to the cataract. The famous cataract of the Nile is nothing more than a rapid, or rather a succession of rapids, with an aggregate fall of not more than fifteen feet. The river divides into a series of channels among the rocks, and boats are taken through these channels without much trouble, though with a considerable expenditure of time and muscle, with the aid of tow-ropes and Arabs. The Arabs at the cataract are about as skilled in rascality as their brethren of the pyramids; they can easily take a boat up in a single day, but manage to consume three or four days in the operation, and extort a great deal of backsheesh for not being longer about it. The descent of the falls takes only a few minutes, as the principal rapid is about two hundred feet long by seventy wide: the water foams and rushes furiously, but with a skilful pilot there is no danger. Accidents happen occasionally, but they are almost invariably due to bad management.

"We stood on the bank and saw a dozen Arabs 'shoot the rapids,' which they did on the short logs they use as ferry-boats. It was apparently dangerous, and we did not grudge the backsheesh they demanded when the show was over. They slid down very gracefully, and probably the risk was no greater for a good swimmer than is the process of coasting downhill for a school-boy. Travellers' tales in the early part of the century represented the cataract of the Nile to be something like Niagara, when, in fact, it is not much worse than a large mill-race. The place is rather picturesque, on the whole, and we are very glad to have seen it.

"From Mahatta, a little village at the head of the falls, we returned by the bank of the river to Assouan. Our ascent of the Nile is ended, and we will now turn our faces to the northward."

A VISIT TO ELEPHANTINE ISLAND.

253

CHAPTER XX.

FROM ASSOUAN TO ALEXANDRIA.-FAREWELL TO EGYPT.

APART of the next day was passed on the island of Elephantine,

opposite Assouan. By reference to the books in their possession, Frank and Fred learned that Elephantine was a place of considerable importance two or three thousand years ago, and a large town once stood there. Its ruins are now covered by a modern village, whose inhabitants are all Nubians; in fact, there are no Arabs living on the island, and it is said that Elephantine has been the home of none but Nubians from time immemorial. Frank asked for the elephants, but could not learn that any had ever been

seen there; he concluded that the island received its name from the entire absence of the largest of animals, or even of any fossil remains of him.

There were two temples, or rather their ruins, on the island at the beginning of the

present century - but

they were destroyed in

AN ANCIENT POULTRY-SHOP.

order that the stone could be utilized for building the houses of Assouan. A gate-way of one of them is yet standing, and there are some walls built by the Romans, who are said to have made Elephantine a military post.

The Nubians offered Roman coins, polished stones, and other curiosities for sale; the coins were supposed to have been dug up on the island, but there was an appearance of newness about them which revealed. their falsity. The quantity of false coins increases year by year, and in many instances the Arabs do not take the trouble to submit them to the

action of acids, in order to give them an antiquated look. The manufacturers of antiquities in Cairo and Luxor generally manage to make their goods have an appearance of genuineness; but sometimes the demand is unexpectedly great, and they rush off their fabrications in a hurry. On several occasions Roman coins were offered to our friends that did not appear to have been out of the mint more than a day or two. One of them bought a copper denarius of the time of the Emperor Hadrian that was bright and fresh as though stamped an hour before; it was so new that the oil used for facilitating its passage through the mint had not been worn off, and was easily perceptible to the fingers.

The boys regretted their inability to go farther than the first cataract of the Nile, and as the steamer headed down the river they gave a longing and lingering look behind them. They were consoled with the reflection that they had seen a great deal in their journey from Cairo, and were farther relieved when Doctor Bronson informed them that comparatively few travellers ever went beyond the first cataract. "Down to within twenty years," said he, "the island of Phile was the Ultima Thule of nearly all tourists on the Nile, and any one who had penetrated farther was regarded as a sort of Mungo Park or Dr. Livingstone. Once in a while somebody went to the second cataract, two hundred and forty miles above the first, and on rare occasions an Englishman or other foreigner visited Khartoom, at the junction of the Blue and White Nile. Bayard Taylor was one of these adventurous travellers, and he went some distance up the White Nile to the country of the Shillook negroes.

"In 1850," he continued, "very little was known of the Nile beyond the point reached by our enterprising countryman. Exploring parties had been up the river considerably beyond the Shillook region, but in most instances the explorers had died while beyond the limits of civilization, or their accounts were insignificent. For a long time it was supposed that the Blue Nile was the principal stream, and as its head-waters had been reached by the famous traveller Bruce, he was credited with the discovery of the sources of the mysterious river. But it was afterward found that the White Nile was the longer of the two and the greater in volume, and many lives were sacrificed in the attempt to find its origin. The discovery and exploration of the lakes of Central Africa, where the Nile rises, belongs to our day; and the names of Burton, Speke, Grant, Livingstone, Stanley, Baker, Long, and others, will go down in history for solving a mystery which has puzzled the world for centuries."

One of the boys asked what they would have seen in case they had been able to ascend the Nile a few hundred miles farther?