noon
They had every one of them a small whitewashed mosque , with a couple of tall minarets ; and around it spread a number of mud-built cottages , looking more like bee-hives than human habitations . They had also every one of them a group of date-palms , overhanging a cluster of mean bare houses ; and they all alike had a picturesque and even imposing air from a distance , but faded away into indescribable squalor as one got abreast of them . Our progress was monotonous . At twelve , noon , we would pass Aboo-Teeg , with its mosque , its palms , its mud-huts , and its camels ; then for a couple of hours we would go on through the midst of a green field on either side , studded by more mud-huts , and backed up by a range of gray desert mountains ; only to come at 2 P.M. , twenty miles higher up , upon Aboo-Teeg once more , with the same mosque , the same mud-huts , and the same haughty camels , placidly chewing the same aristocratic cud , but under the alias of Koos-kam . After a wild hubbub at the quay , we would leave Koos-kam behind , with its camels still serenely munching day-before-yesterday 's dinner ; and twenty miles further on , again , having passed through the same green plain , backed by the same gray mountains , we would stop once more at the identical Koos-kam , which this time absurdly described itself as Tahtah . But whether it was Aboo-Teeg or Koos-kam or Tahtah or anything else , only the name differed : it was always the same town , and had always the same camels at precisely the same stage of the digestive process . It seemed to us immaterial whether you saw all the Nile or only five miles of it .