One such thing, it will readily be understood, is sufficient to disfigure pitiably the whole of the surroundings.

The old Arab town, with its little white houses, its minarets and its palm-trees, might as well not exist.

The famous temple and the forest of heavy Osiridean columns admire themselves in vain in the waters of the river.

It is the end of Luxor.
And what a crowd of people is here! While, on the contrary, the opposite bank seems so absolutely desertlike, with its stretches of golden sand and, on the horizon, its mountains of the colour of glowing embers, which, as we know, are full of mummies.
Poor Luxor! Along the banks is a row of tourist boats, a sort of two or three storeyed barracks, which nowadays infest the Nile from Cairo to the Cataracts.

Their whistlings and the vibration of their dynamos make an intolerable noise.