XVI
PHILAE
As I drew slowly nearer and nearer to the home of "the great
Enchantress," or, as Isis was also called in bygone days, "the Lady of
Philae," the land began to change in character, to be full of a new and
barbaric meaning. In recent years I have paid many visits to northern
Africa, but only to Tunisia and Algeria, countries that are wilder
looking, and much wilder seeming than Egypt. Now, as I approached
Assuan, I seemed at last to be also approaching the real, the intense
Africa that I had known in the Sahara, the enigmatic siren, savage and
strange and wonderful, whom the typical Ouled Nail, crowned with
gold, and tufted with ostrich plumes, painted with kohl, tattooed, and
perfumed, hung with golden coins and amulets, and framed in plaits
of coarse, false hair, represents indifferently to the eyes of the
travelling stranger. For at last I saw the sands that I love creeping
down to the banks of the Nile. And they brought with them that wonderful
air which belongs only to them--the air that dwells among the dunes in
the solitary places, that is like the cool touch of Liberty upon
the face of a man, that makes the brown child of the nomad as lithe,
tireless, and fierce-spirited as a young panther, and sets flame in the
eyes of the Arab horse, and gives speed of the wind to the Sloughi. The
true lover of the desert can never rid his soul of its passion for the
sands, and now my heart leaped as I stole into their pure embraces, as
I saw to right and left amber curves and sheeny recesses, shining ridges
and bloomy clefts.
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