THE FAYOUM OR ARTISTS IN PART I. SKETCH I OUR PLAN. Our Luggage and Ourselves. IF RAMESIS had reckoned upon us to make an inventory of his pylones, or to set the catalogue of his ancestors right, he would have been grossly cheated. We set out with a deliberate intention of ingratitude towards the Ptolemies, and we should have considered ourselves ill-used if, in order to paint the Pyramids, we had been obliged to reckon their strata. Our object in going to Egypt was to look out for subjects for pictures, and to paint them. We did not pretend to see everything, but we wished to see B thoroughly, and to paint the truth of everything we were to see. Thus, cobalt blue and dry collodion played a much more important part in our equipment than flannel and antidotes. Our chief solicitude was that our supply of paints should not fall short; for though we did not despise the hunting we expected to have, or any other amusement, our colour-box was of far greater importance than our weapons of de struction. The younger members of our party attached a ridiculous importance to their luggage, which was heavy in proportion to the inexperience of its owners. For my part, I had to send back to Paris a collection of useless things with which I had laden my trunks on the sage excuse that I was going into the Desert. Into a country where one cannot want anything, it is absurd to take anything. Each of us thought he had nothing but the merest necessaries with him, and yet we looked as if the Pyramids themselves were following us. OUR FIRST SIGHT OF AFRICA. 3 SKETCH II. FROM THE LYONS RAILWAY-STATION TO 'STOP!' cried a man in a turban, whom we had taken on board at Messina as a pilot; thus announcing at the same time the end of a tedious passage and the rising of the curtain before the great fairy scene called a voyage in the East. But the curtain did not rise all at once; a thick mist obscured the horizon after a most disobliging and inhospitable fashion. The sun made us wait for him, like a king who desires to dazzle his guests by the splendour of his long-expected presence-sending up innumerable flashes along the horizon, until at length his disc became completely visible above the water. Then we saw the coast of Africa, like a long gilded straw, floating in the distance. Our imagination outstripped the ship. We vied with each other in perceiving the imperceptible. 'Do you see this?' 'Do you see that?' 'Those are palm-trees!' 'No, |