could be procured in Alexandria, and shaped in the way which he had found most effective in excavating among the buried cities of Italy.
“After visiting, merely to inspect the pyramids, we travelled direct to Thebes, where he intended to excavate, and had procured a firman requiring the sheikh to supply as many hands as he might think fit. The count had got a plan of Thebes as it used to be when it was an inhabited city. It was drawn on a very ancient-looking parchment, and he made a great deal of mystery about it, never leaving it about for anybody to look at; and once, when I asked him who had drawn it, he rudely turned his back to me without replying, which I conceived to be a hint that he did not wish to be questioned about it. Before he set the men to work, he showed me a drawing of a pillar, on which the figure of a man was sculptured in low relief, and twining round it a serpent, with its head completely buried in the figure, as though devouring its heart. Together we searched for this pillar, and after days and days of vain seeking, we discovered it at, if I remember rightly, the south-west corner of the ruins. It lay on the ground, with fragments of other pillars all around it, and had evidently, like them, been separated from its base by violence, the tradition among the Arabs being, that Defterdar Bey’s artillerymen amused themselves by firing at the upright pillars. The difficulty to be overcome, after finding it, was to ascertain from which of the bases discovered on clearing away the sand the pillar had been detached; and when this had been decided to the best of our judgment, the count drew the symbol of the serpent in the sand, the base lying in the centre of the figure. The dimensions of the symbol were carefully measured, according to some scale, and no time was lost after this in setting as many men to work in clearing away the fragments and the sand as could work without being in each other’s way. The ordinary difficulty of getting labour was easily overcome by a liberal present to the sheikh, and regular payment of the men every evening, allowing such as chose to absent themselves the next day, and taking others in their place when they did not present themselves at the hour fixed. My share of the labour was to watch the operations of the Arabs, to see that every stone they turned up was taken to the count, who examined every stone as it was raised. One day an Arab brought me a stone he had just dug up, and asked me for a present in return. It was a perfect cube, and on one of its faces there was the same design as on the pillar, the figure of the serpent wandering over three others, through a maze of hieroglyphics. I made the man show me the place where it had been dug up, and then I called the count to look at it. The moment he saw the design he turned as pale as death. I drew a glass of water from a cask beside us, and gave it to him to drink; this helped to restore him; he went and sat down again under his umbrella, and resumed his examination of the stones beside him. About an hour afterwards he directed me to tell the men that they were to cease excavating here for the present, till he had had time to examine the stones which had accumulated, and to set them at work at the Temple of the Three Suns, as we named it, from the symbol of the sun being cut on each of the pillars, and arranged in the form of a triangle—three symbols on each column. This temple was about half-a-mile distant, and he desired me to I come back as soon as I had set them to work. The idlers, who were always present watching the operations of the diggers, followed their friends, so that when I returned to the count I found him alone, attentively studying a small plan I had not seen before. I had noted so carefully the spot where the stone was dug out, that I saw at once he was sitting on it, I suppose to make certain that it should not be forgotten. After he had studied the plan for some time, he took up the stone, and, turning it over till the side on which was the tip of the serpent’s tail came uppermost, he appeared to read the hieroglyphics, stopping every minute or so to refer to his plan. Presently he left off reading, and drew the symbol of the serpent on the sand, as before, but on a smaller scale, and with greater attention to accuracy. He next requested me to fetch a shovel and two pickaxes from the tent, and we soon were both of us hard at work. We left off to dine at the usual hour, but the evening being a fine moonlight one, the count expressed his determination to resume his labour, and I followed his example. We had not been at work very long when the count, who was using the pickaxe, left off suddenly and sat down, while I shovelled out the dirt. He then showed me the upper edge of a large stone, which proved to be the threshold of the entrance to the building, which formerly stood on this spot. It was not long before we had made a breach through a thin wall of stone or concrete beneath this stone, large enough to admit of our seeing that it opened into a cellar, or cave. The count wanted to enter immediately, and if I had not checked him he would have dropped through the hole, heedless of the depth he might have fallen—about seven feet. I next went back to the tent, and got four short wax candles, and a box of matches; and, thinking that a stimulant might be useful, I filled a small bottle with brandy, which I put in my pocket, and returned to the count. The moon was so bright that we did not light our candles till we were fairly within the building.
“The apartment in which we first entered was small and square, and on its sides were numerous short inscriptions in hieroglyphics. These the count found it necessary to translate before he went any further, so that by the time he had finished, the sun was rising again, and we scrambled out of the hole, putting stones against it and heaping the dirt over them to conceal it. We then went to the new excavations, and remained there about an hour, that none of the Arabs might suspect our discovery. After breakfast we lay down in the tent and slept till evening; then we washed and dined, and lighting a cigar each, we strolled away as though we had no object in view, the count first requesting me to tell the servants they might go to sleep when they liked, as he would want nothing more that night.
“We found the tools and everything else as we had left them, and it took us but a few minutes to reopen the hole and drop through it into the