We made several windings with alternate views of fertile ground and sandy desert, rocky hills and huge boulders, and a last on a rounded summit there appeared a dome that overlookes Assouan. We made a sharp bend to the left passing more boulders and with the island of Elephantine on our right swung in towards the town and made fast to the bank.
The river seemed to end here; we were enclosed in an amphitheatre variously composed of sand, granite, town, and verdure from which there appeared to be no egress save by the route through which we had advanced. Steam was blown off and the upward journey of our boat was ended. As we went on shore we met a crowd of Arabs and Nubians with ostrich feathers, Nubian dresses, old coins, arrows, silver ornaments, battle axes and the like for sale.
The Arabs were like those we had seen down the river, but the Nubians were another lot.
Their black skins were covered with scanty clothing, and their woolly hair was done into small ringlets about the size of lead pencils and plentifully saturated with grease. To trade with them required as much bargaining as with the Arabs, and sometimes a little more.
They had high prices for their ostrich feathers, but we gradually brought them down. One article dealt in here was the whip of hippopotamus hide which goes by the name of courbash. Some of the passengers bought each a dozen or more; I contented myself with one whip and a cane as I did not wish to affect the market.
