XXXI. ULTIMA THULE. WE sought the South no longer. Far flown already into a silent land, the Ibis finally furled her wings at Aboo Simbel. But far and ever farther southward, over the still river-reaches, pressed piercing thought, nor paused at Khartoum where the Nile divides, nor lingered until lost in the mountains of the moon. Are they sarcastically named, those mountains, or prophetically, that when they are explored, the real moon ranges shall be determined? Up through the ruins of the eldest land and the eldest race came two children of the youngest, and stood gazing southward into silence. Southward into the childishness of races forever in their dotage or never to grow-toward the Dinkas and the shores loved of the lotus, where they worship trees, and pull out the incisors for beauty, and where a threelegged stool is a king's throne. The South! our synonym of love, beauty, and a wide world unrealized. Lotus fragrance blows outward from that name, and steeps us in blissful dreams that bubble audibly in song from pcets' lips. It is the realm of faery-fantasy and perfected passion. Dark, deep eyes gushing radiance in rapt summer noons, are the South, visible and bewildering to the imagination of the North. Whoso sails southward is a happy mariner, and we fancy his ship gliding forever across tranced sapphire seas, reeking with rarest odors, steeped in sunshine and silence, wafted by winds that faint with sweet and balm against the silken sails; for the South has no wood for us but sandal, and ebony, and cedar, and no stuffs but silks and cloth of gold. Sumptuous is the South-a Syren singing us ever forward to a bliss never reached; but with each mile won she makes the pursuit more passionate, brimming the cup that only feeds the thirst, with delicious draughts that taste divine. Then some love-drunken poet beholds her as a person, and bursts into song "I muse, as a traniuce, whene'er The languors of thy love-deep eyes Float on to me. I would I were So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies To stand apart and to adore, Gazing on thee for evermore- Serene, imperial Eleanore." The morning was bright when the Ibis stopped at Aboo Simbel. Nero presently arrived, and the blue pennant passed, flying forward to Wady Halfa and the second cataract. After a brief delay and a pleasant call, Nero stretched into the stream, and the Italian tricolor floated off southward, and disappeared. The Ibis was left alone at the shore. Over it rose abruptly a bold, picturesque rock, which, of all the two hundred miles between the cataracts, is the natural site for a rock temple. A grand goal is Aboo Simbel for the long Nile voyage, and the more striking that it is approached from Cairo, through long ranges of white plaster mosques, and minarets, and square mud pigeonhouses the highest architectural attempt of modern Egyptian genius on the Nile. The Howadji is ushered by dwarfs into the presence of a God. The long four weeks' flight of the Ibis through such a race and works to this temple goal, is the sad, severe criticism of time upon himself and his own changes. For although time is wise, and buries, where he can, his past from his future, yet here is something mightier than he ; and the azure of the sky which he cannot tarnish, preserves the valorous deeds of his youth freshly and fair to his unwilling age. Vainly he strives to bury the proofs and works of his early genius-vainly in remote Nubia he calls upon the desert to hide them, that young England and young America may flatter their fond conceits, that now for the first time man fairly lives, and human genius plays. Some wandering Belzoni thwarts his plansfoils the desert, and on the first of August, 1817, with Mr. Beechy, and Captains Irby and Mangles pushes his way into "the finest and most extensive excavation in Nubia"-thinks it "very large" at first, and gradually his "astonishment increased," as he finds it to be "one of the most magnificent of temples, enriched with beautiful intaglios-painting-colossal figures, etc.," which etc. is precisely the inexpressible grandeur of Aboo Simbel. For he who has not flown up the Nile, must begin his travels again, if he would behold ruins. Standing at Aboo Simbel, and looking southward, Greece and Rome are toys of yesterday, and vapors wreathing away. When once the Egyptian temples are seen, they alone occupy the land, and suggest their own priests and people. The hovels of the present race are as ant-hills at their gates. Their prominency and importance cannot be conceived from the value and interest of other ruins. Here at Aboo Simbel the Howadji, after potential potations and much meditation, is inclined to bless the desert; for he feels that in Egypt it is the ally of art, and the friend of modern times. The Howadji entered now upon a course of temples. The Ibis pointed her prow northward, and sight-seeing commenced. Yet on these pages remains slight detail of what she saw as as she threaded homeward that wonderful wilderness of ruin. Not a diary of details, but slightest sketches of impression, were found at Cairo under her wing. This day at Aboo Simbel, while the first officer, Seyd, superintended the taking down of the masts and sails and the arrangement of the huge oarsfor we were to float and row northward, when the wind would allow-and while the Hadji Hamed and his kitchen were removed to the extreme prow, to make room for the rowers on the middle deck, the Howadji climbed the steep sand-bank to the temples of Aboo Simbel. The smaller one is nearest the river, and is an excavation in the solid rock, with six sculptured figures on the façade. Two of these are Athor, the Egyptian Venus, to whom the temple was consecrate. She had beautiful names, and of delicate significance, as the Lady of the West, because she received the setting sun—the Night, not primeval darkness, but the mellow tropical night, breathing coolness and balm. Athor's emblems are so like those of Isis, that the two deities are often confounded. She was the latter Aphrodite of the Greeks, to whom they built the Dendereh temple; and, like Isis, is cowhorned and mild-eyed, with a disk between the |