108 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

Mexican tierra caliente. The lofty shafts of the date and the vaulted foliage of the dotim-palm, blended in the most picturesque groupage, contrasted with the lace-like texture of the flowering mimosa, and the cloudy boughs of a kind of gray cypress. The turf under the trees was soft and green, and between the slim trunks we looked over the plain, to the Libyan Mountains— a long train of rosy lights and violet shadows. Out of this lovely wood we passed between magnificent fields of dourra and the castor-oil bean, fifteen feet in height, to a dyke which crossed the meadows to Dendera. The leagues of rank grass on our right rolled away to the Desert in shining billows, and the fresh west-wind wrapped us in a bath of intoxicating odors. In the midst of this green and peaceful plain rose the earthy mounds of Tentyra, and the portico of the temple, almost buried beneath them, stood like a beacon, marking the boundary of the Desert.

We galloped our little animals along the dyke, over heaps of dirt and broken bricks, among which a number of Arabs were burrowing for nitrous earth, and dismounted at a small pylon, which stands two or three hundred paces in front of the temple. The huge jambs of sandstone, covered with sharply cut hieroglyphics and figures of the Egyptian gods, and surmounted by a single block, bearing the mysterious winged globe and serpent, detained us but a moment, and we hurried down what was once the dromos of the temple, now represented by a double wall of unburnt bricks. The portico, more than a hundred feet in length, and .supported by six columns, united by screens of masonry, no stone of which, or of the columns themselves, is unsculptured, is massive and imposing, but struck me as be'ng too depressed to produce a very grand effect. What was my