AN ANCIENT POULTRY-SHOP.
There were two temples, or rather their ruins, on the island at the beginning of the present century—but they were destroyed in 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 Philæ 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 insignificant. 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?
