70 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

across the plain, as the soil was still wet and adhesive. It was too late to visit the beautiful Pyramids of Dashoor, the first of which is more than three hundred feet in height, and from a distance has almost as grand an effect as those of Gizeh. Our tired donkeys lagged slowly along to the palm-groves of Mitrahenny, where we saw mounds of earth, a few blocks of red granite and a colossal statue of Remeses II. (Sesostris) — which until now were supposed to be the only remains of Memphis.

The statue lies on its face in a hole filled with water. The countenance is said to be very beautiful, but I could only see the top of Sesostris's back, which bore a faint resemblance to a crocodile.

Through fields of cotton in pod and beans in blossom, we rode to the Nile, dismissed our donkeys and their attendants, and lay down on some bundles of corn-stalks to wait the arrival of our boat. But there had been a south wind all day, and we had ridden much faster than our men could tow. We sat till long after sunset before the stars and stripes, floating from the mizzen of the Cleopatra, turned the corner below Bedrasheyn. When, at last, we sat at our cabin-table, weary and hungry, we were ready to confess that the works of art produced by our cook, Salame, were more marvellous and interesting than Memphis and the Pyramids.