3-074-796 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The First Cataract of the Nile, near the Island of Philae, 1883. 'Seven hundred and thirty miles up the Nile from the Mediterranean, the long and narrow valley of Upper Egypt terminates with the town of Assouan, the "First Cataract," which should rather be called the Lower Rapids, and the Temples of Philae...Many English tourists go up the Nile to Philae, and are familiar with the scene represented in our Sketch. A very exact description of it is given by Mr. Julian Arnold, in his narrative of four months' Nile Voyage called "Palms and temples."...We quote Mr. Arnold's description of the misnamed "Cataracts": "through the passage cut between them, the river foams and seethes round the rocks and islands which oppose their water-worn faces to the stream, as it rushes by, in eddy and whirlpool, to still its fretful volume in Assouan's dark pool. The panorama of the 'Cataracts,' with their dark volcanic bed, made blacker by the broken frame of silvered water, and their frame of distant sand-girt hills, forms a most impressive picture. Nowhere else does the Nile more impress the beholder than in these solitudes, where its endless waters tear by with ceaseless rush among the many islands that rise in its midst, in the most weird shapes imaginable'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.