with sculptures and ornaments of extreme richness and delicacy. We were charmed with those hieroglyphs in which several animals were represented according to the most rigorous rules of drawing.

The following day was devoted to visiting the Sérapium. M. Mariette, the author of this wonderful discovery, was not at his head-quarters, so we had to inspect without him the series of fantastic tombs, in which thirty-three bulls, each more like Apis than the preceding, have slept for centuries, safe from time's changes. The astonishing aspect of these blocks of stone, the enormous weight which each monolith represents, put calculation to flight at first. But the more difficult the problem, the more simply and ingeniously the Egyptians solved it.

In order to introduce the tombs of the sacred bulls into the subterranean galleries which we visited, a well was cut in the rock, above the space which each enormous stone was to occupy. The well being filled up with fine sand, the block of granite was brought to its orifice; then began a process of gradual excavation, and each huge sarcophagus sank down of itself into the place assigned to it. Could anything be more simple? Now, their extraction would be a mathematical impossibility, as Cambyses knew very well when he sounded these treasure-chests, and

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made up his mind to employ the burglarious tools which he never laid aside, and to unpack the treasure piecemeal. After having thrown to the winds the sacred bones of all the bulls, he made a conscientious list of the plate, &c.; and when M. Mariette penetrated this hiding-place of the ages, there was not as much as a nail left. Its last lodger might have been a royal prince of a certain House, so clean and so clever had been the pillage. Our camp was pitched upon the border of the last deposit of vegetable sediment which the Nile had left behind it. Our tents, which faced the dry Desert, stood in verdure, and indeed almost in mud, on the edge of a blackish pond, in which the ducks dipped and guzzled. I made a study of the demarcation between the yellow burning sands and the green and fertile earth, and it was exactly like one of those geographical maps on which the departments and the provinces are severally coloured blue and green to aid the memory of the eyes A dramatic incident occurred in the vicinity of this lake. At eleven o'clock at night, when the fires were extinguished, and everyone was asleep, a perfect army of geese flew over our heads, making a noise of which no words of mine could convey an idea. The extraordinary size of the Egyptian geese, the rush of their wings through the palm-trees, and their wild

hoarse cries, the tremendous noise made by our frightened asses and camels, made this sudden tempest a memorable scene of uproar. In an instant our most intrepid sportsmen were on their feet, had pulled on their boots, and taken their guns, and rushed out with the hope of bagging some of our untimely visitors. But all their efforts proved fruitless; and before morning the winged army had decamped, carrying its noise and rush to some place where men and guns were not.

Sakkara and Dachour, where we were to camp on the morrow, lie on the boundary of the former site of the city of Memphis. From the Sérapium and the Pyramids of Sakkara it is easy to follow the outline of this great city, the greatest of antiquity, according to Strabo, Herodotus, and all travellers. It has yet to be discovered, for it is entirely buried in the sand, which is so incredibly difficult to search, in consequence of its constant shifting, that it is hard to say when any of the buried treasures and wonders may be brought to light. We saw numbers of bones which had been naturally disinterred by the movement of the soil, and had only to stoop at any moment to pick up quantities of human remains calcined by Innumerable mutilated mummies were strewn

time.

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about the sands; and under heaps of wrappers, and heads of hair, I found a woman's skull, from which I extracted several exquisitely white teeth. I have no doubt they belonged to one of the ladies-in-waiting on the daughter of Pharaoh.

My friend G

I

brought home two skulls, which now adorn his own little Sérapium at Chatou. contented myself with filling my pockets full of wrapping-cloths, all well preserved, and whose fine close web gives us an idea of the stuffs they wore in the morning years of the world. I also had the good fortune to pick up one of those little amulets, in enamel, which are so common in Egypt, but which one generally has to buy from the Arabs. It represented a woman with a lioness' head-the ordinary personification of the goddess Isis. The profusion of remains on the surface, and within reach of one's hand, makes one think longingly of all that would certainly be found beneath, if the search were not so costly and so difficult.

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We three were refractories, and we now had to think about rejoining the caravan, which had left Sakkara in the morning, to go on and encamp at Dachour. There was a certain charm of isolation about our little group of four, including our Arab. In

the face of the immensity of the desert, and with two respectable pyramids for points of comparison, I felt curiously small. We looked like flies on the surface of a huge cake dusted with powdered sugar.

Having been misinformed respecting the road by which we should strike the path to Dachour, we found ourselves climbing interminable sandhills, like great sea-waves, and the obstacles and movements of the ground multiplying themselves from moment to moment in the way of our unfortunate beasts.

By dint of resignation and the 'courbache,' we at length emerged from the sand labyrinth, and began to see close to us the palm-trees, which we had been so long looking at in the distance, that we had begun to think we were deceived by a mirage. In our natural anxiety to shorten our route we had prolonged it to an extent which rendered our calculations respecting the hour at which we might hope to reach Dachour decidedly dispiriting. We were then crossing at speed a splendid palm-tree wood, in which the stems were so close together, that it required very careful riding to avoid the risk of breaking our legs between their rugged surfaces. Suddenly, we encountered one of those immense canals which intersect Middle Egypt. These works are very important, and