233
hand, gave out a clear, bell-like sound. It secmedt strange and a)most ludicrous thus to stund, candle in hand, within the stone coffin of 8 sucred bull! “These be thy gods, O Bgypu!” Strange that u people so advanced in the arts and seienees, so distinguished for wisdom, who have left behind rums that are still the uiliniration of the world, should have religious ideas so low as to syorsbip four- fonted beasts. birds and creeping reptiles, What an immense aincunt of money, thne anu Jabor have been expended to excavate these long galleries, to bring these huge blocks of porpliyry many hundred mites, to carve and polish them with almost mlracu- Joua skill, and then to fit each one in a niche to become the coflin of a—buif, And this was tlone, too, by a people without labor- saving Machinery, who knew nothing of the use of iron teols—for I believe no iron in- etrumentof any kind jing been found in Egypt. The toola they used were of copper, but hard and pliant as steel. Ifow to make itso is one of the “lost arts,’ which all the machinery and boasted knowledge of Birm- ingham or Sheffield cannot now accomplish.
We afterwards visited the 1emple near by and wandered through several rooms which have byt Jately been recovered from the sand. They ure ned with white marble orcement, and upon the walls and’ ecilings are paintings as bright in colors wnd fresii- looking as if executed only yesterday.
In one of these rooms, seated on the samt, and surrounded by the works of the “oli masters ” (probably 4,000 years okl), we tool: our frugul limel, and drank in English ale to the memory of the quaint old fellows whose pictures stared at us from the walls-— then tossed fhe bones to their descendants, acrowd of hungry Bedouins, who eagerly picked up every scrap.
Ontside we found a lot of Arabs emploscd in unrolling inuinmies, thousands of which are buried in a pit near the temple. Great piles of skulls, crumbling bones and seraps of mummy cloth were seattered around. We secured here some genuine relies and antiques, old us the Pharnol: Ms so-called antiques sold in Cairo, the searaber, ur sacred beetles, are wv as Lam told, atthe factory of an euterpris ing Yankee or Engtishman named Smith, in Assouan, at the foot of the first eataract of the Nile.
Having spent three hours at Sakharra we started on our return. Our intention had been to cross the desert from here to Ghizah, but the weather made such an expedition
