and get out as speedily as possible. The fine
desert sand makes soft tumbling ground,
and though the bits of broken earthenware,
mingling with the pulverised human
and animal bones with which it is mixed
hereabouts, has a slightly gritty feeling to
the hands and face, matters might easily be
worse, and our excellent Hassan is profuse
in his expressions of regret. He has misled
our party of four on our way over the
desert from the pyramids of Ghizeh—the
pyramids of everybody's school-days—to
the other and less familiar group of pyramids,
under the shadow of which our tent
is pitched; night has come on, and there is
no moon, and we have to thread our way
in the dark through a maze of excavated
temples and open pits, looking in vain
through the thick night for our beacon-fire.
Hassan cheers us by the news that there
are "very bad Bedouins about," and that
he has hired armed men from the village of
Abousir to guard the tent we cannot find;
and, finally, after persisting boldly that the
next and the next wave of stone and sand
alone hides our resting-place, fairly sits
down and cries by the way-side, until his
bellowing rouses the bats from their tombs,
who fly past us with their great wings
fanning our cheeks. Hassan's tears show us
that we must depend on ourselves, and as he
becomes more limp and abject every minute,
we treat him with hypocritical gentleness,
beg him to remount his ass, and dividing
our party into detachments of one, ride in
different directions round the pyramid,
which is at once our landmark and our
will-o'-the-wisp. For, dark as the night is,
we are sufficiently near this pyramid to
know that there is, in a given direction,
something between us and the sky, and so
stumbling often, and, as we found afterwards,
describing many a weary circle
among the holes and tombs of the endless
desert, we contrive at last to find the hollow
in which nestles our tent. Hassan had for
the last half-hour done nothing but wag
his head and body to and fro from the
waist upwards, and each time his forehead
touched his donkey's mane, call upon Allah
piteously.

The flexible Mr. Punch, when congratulating
himself upon triumphing over his
enemies, and banging his head on the
puppet-show stage, represents Hassan's
motion at this time; while the grunt of the
Irish pavior, with its forced cadence at
the end, is not unlike his cry of prayer,
"E-Heu!" (Allah) with a pause between
the first and second syllable, and a strong
aspiration of the " H," is as nearly the
invocation as it can be written in English,
and it is to be heard on all occasions when
there is difficulty to be surmounted or work
to be done by the people of Egypt. It
comes upon you everywhere. The sailors
of our Nile boat when tightening a rope or
shifting a sail; the women and children
filling hand-baskets with earth, and carrying
them on their heads from point to
point to remedy the damage done to a road
by the recent inundations; the workmen
engaged in building up a new wall to our
hotel; the Arabs busy about our tent; and,
lastly, the howling dervishes of Cairo,
all practise this monotonous, melancholy
"E-Heu!" and all deliver themselves of
the last syllable as if it were fired off
suddenly from the pit of the stomach.

Hassan gave up praying, and brightened
up immediately we found the tent, for two
of the Arab servants, sent on in the morning
and left in charge, were squabbling,
and the self-imposed necessity of beating
them vigorously about the head with a
stirrup-leather quite restored his spirits.
He had no shame at having wept. " The
very bad Bedouins might have come upon
us, and we might all have been robbed and
killed, and then what would poor Hassan
have done for other gentlemens to take into
the deserts," was, he considered, sufficient
explanation and excuse. The tent he had
hired was horribly small and wretchedly
ill-provided. We had, under advice, brought
a well-stocked hamper and wine from our
hotel, so that we were independent in the
matter of food. But in every detail which
would have added to our comfort this most
pretentious of dragomen fell short. Our
overcoats and railway rugs were our only
bedding, and even the soft sand developed a
surprising facility for resolving itself into
ridges and lumps during the weary night.
Our valiant guards snored more loudly
than anything human I ever heard before,
and as their extreme solicitude for our
welfare led them so to place themselves
outside, that their sleeping bodies could be
felt distinctly through the canvas when we
lay down for the night, we lost in comfort
what we were fancifully supposed by
Hassan to gain in security. Our tent was
so narrow that we had to pack tightly, and
the two lying nearest its sides were
compelled to roll themselves against the canvas,
so as to convert it into hammocks turned
sideways, while at every stretch of the
limbs, heads, legs, and arms came into
collision. We had dined at full length on the