THE GROTTOES OF BENI-HASSAN. t raohs. It is difficult to reconcile this fact with the very per ceptible encroachments which the sand is making on the Libyan shore ; but we may at least be satisfied that the glorious harvestvalley through which the river wanders can never be wholly effaced thereby.

We climbed to the glaring level of the Desert, carrying with us the plumes of a beautiful gray heron which my friend brought down. A solitary Arab horseman was slowly moving along the base of the arid hills, and we descried in the distance a light-footed gazelle, which leisurely kept aloof and mocked our efforts to surround it. At .the foot of the mountain we passed two ruined villages, destroyed several years ago by Ibrahim Pasha, on account of the marauding propensities of the inhabitants. It has a cruel sound, when you are told that the people were driven away, and their dwellings razed to the ground, but the reality is a trifling matter. The Arabs take their water-skins and pottery, jump into the Nile, swim across to a safer place, and in three or four days their palaces of mud are drying in the sun. "We came upon them the next morning, as thievishly inclined as ever, and this was the only place where I found the people otherwise than friendly.

A steep path, up a slope covered with rounded boulders of hard black rock, leads to the grottoes of Beni-Hassan. They are among the oldest in Egypt, dating from the reign of Osirtasen I, about 1750 years before the Christian Era, and are interesting from their encaustic paintings, representing Egjrptian life and customs at that early date. The rock chambers extend for nearly half a mile along the side of the mountain.

The most of them are plain and without particular interest and they have all suflered from the great spoilers of Egypt—