TUB DANCING GIRLS OF EGYPT, 131 CHAPTER X.

THE ALMEHS, LUXOR AND K.ARNAK.

The Dancing Girls of Egypt — A Night Scene in Luxor— The Orange-Blossom and the Apple-Blossom — The Beautiful Bemba — The Dance — Performance of the Apple Blossom — The Temple of Luxor — A Mohammedan School — Gallop to Karnak — View of the Ruins — The Great Hall of Pillars — Bedouin Diversions — A Night Ride — Earnak under the Pull Moon — Farewell to Thebes.

Two days in the tombs of the Kings and the temples of the Remesides and the Osirei exhausted us more thoroughly than a week of hard labor. In addition to the natural and exciting emotion, with which we contemplated those remains, and which we would not have repressed, if we could, we puzzled ourselves with the secrets of Egyptian architecture and the mysteries of Egyptian faith. Those pregnant days were followed by sleepless nights, and we reached Luxor at sunset with a certain dread of the morrow. Our mental nerves were too tensely strung, and we felt severely the want of some relaxation of an opposite character. The course which we adopted to freshen our minds for Karnak may strike a novice as singular, but ft was most effectual, and can be explained on the truest philosophical principles. In the afternoon Achmet had informed us that two of the celebrated Almehs, or dancing-women of the East, who had