82 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

those of Beni-Hassan, but have been almost ruined by the modern Egyptians. The enormous square pillars which filled their halls have been shattered down for lime, and only fragments of the capitals still hang from the ceilings of solid rock. The sculptures and hieroglyphics, which are here not painted but sculptured in intaglio, are also greatly defaced. The second tomb ealled by the Arabs Stall Kamam (Pigeon Stable), retains its grand doorway, which has on each side the colossal figure of an ancient king. The sand around its mouth is filled with fragments of mummied wolves, and on our way up the mountain we scared one of their descendants from his lair in a solitary tomb. The Stall Hamam is about sixty feet square by forty in height, and in its rough and ruined aspect is more impressive than the more chaste and elegant chambers of Beni-Hassan. The view of the plain of Siout, seen through its entrance, has a truly magical effect. From the gray twilight of the hall in which you stand, the green of the fields, the purple of the distant mountains, and the blue of the sky, dazzle your eye as if tinged with the broken rays of a prism.

From the summit of the mountain, which we reached by scaling a crevice in its white cliffs, we overlooked a more beauiiful landscape than that seen from the Pyramid. In the north, beyond the spires of Manfalout and the crags of Aboufayda, we counted the long palm-groves, receding behind one another to the yellow shore of the Desert ; in front, the winding Nile and the Arabian Mountains; southward, a sea of wheat and clover here deepening into dark emerald, there paling into gold, according to the degree of moisture in the soil, and ceasing only because the eye refused to follow ; whilo be-