LEAVE THE PYRAMIDS. ?!

CHAPTER VI.

PROM MEMPHIS TO SIOUT.

Leaving the Pyramids — A Calm and a Breeze — A Coptic Visit — Minyeh — The Grottoei of Beni-Hassan — Doum Palms and Crocodiles— Djcbel Aboufayda— Entrance into Upper Egypt — Diversions of the Boatmen — Siout— Its Tombs — A Landscape — A Bath.

" It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream." Leigh Hunt's Sonnet to tiie Nile.

The extent of my journey into Africa led me to reverse the usual plan pursued by travellers on the Nile, who sail to Assouan or "Wadi-Halfa without pause, and visit the antiquities on their return. I have never been able to discern the philosophy of this plan. The voyage up is always longer, and more tedious (to those heathens who call the Nile tedious), than the return ; besides which, two visits, though brief, with an interval between, leave a more complete and enduring image, than a single one. The mind has time to analyze and contrast, and can afterwards confirm or correct the first impressions. How any one can sail from Cairo to Siout, a voyage of two hundred and sixty miles, with but one or two points of interest, without taking the Pyramids with him in memory, I cannot imagine. "Were it not for that recollection, I should have pronounced Modern Egypt more interesting than the