n you
eat with kings the desire of life shall pass from you!"

Hullo, old boy! He gave you a good shilling's worth, anyhow! Though it
was rather a nasty hit that at your Scottish national character! You
don't believe it surely? Look at the Sphinx and laugh. What does it
matter if we two midges, among all the midges that have crawled about
his paws, don't exactly enjoy ourselves the whole of our brief day?

What is that? How you start! No, it's not a lion roaring, though it's a
pretty good imitation; it's only a camel cursing and snarling with all
his might while his owner piles a few bushels' weight on his back. He
doesn't really mind it, but it is the immemorial custom of camels to
protest with hideousness and confused noise, and if he didn't do it his
trade union would be down upon him.

"Poste-carte----"

Come, let us go!

[Illustration: STRANGE LOOKING BEASTS MINCING ALONG LIKE GIGANTIC
PEACOCKS.]

CHAPTER V

THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT

Of course you have been in a cinematograph theatre, and there, seated
comfortably, have watched the various scenes pass before you. The great
charm of these scenes is that the people really did do the things which
we here see them doing, even down to the smallest gestures. But often
the pleasure is spoilt by knowing that the actors were only making these
gestures for the purpose of being photographed; also the scenes are
sometimes disconnected and scrappy, and seldom indeed is it that they
are represented in colour, and then, though the colour is clever enough,
it is not like that of nature.

To-day we are watching a cinematograph which has none of these
drawbacks. We are seated in a leather-lined railway carriage running
from Cairo southward up the country to a place called Luxor, and passing
before us every minute are vivid pictures of the life of Egypt. The
railway runs along the middle of Egypt, just as the Nile does, but we do
not often see the river from the line, for at this time of the year it
flows low down between its banks. It is on the other side of the railway
that the main interest lies. Here there is a canal as straight as the
line and close beside it, and on the far side of it is a sort of raised
tow-path--the great highway of Egypt. We see it against a fringe of
bushy palm trees at one minute, and the next against a field of tall,
green-growing stuff, which looks exactly like those rushes found on the
banks of our own rivers. This, however, is maize, or