it was not without a heartfelt grief that
I tore myself away from my friends, and bade adieu to the Philippines.

Here ought to terminate the account which I proposed: yet I cannot
refrain from dedicating a few lines to my return to my native land.

On board various vessels I passed the coasts of India, the Persian
Gulf, and the Red Sea.

After having often admired the grand works of Nature, I felt a strong
desire to see the gigantic works executed by the hand of man.

I went to Thebes, and there visited in detail its palaces, its tombs,
and its monolithes. I descended the Nile, stopping at every place
which contained any monuments worthy of my curiosity. I ascended
one of the Pyramids. I passed several days in Cairo, and set out for
Alexandria, where I embarked anew, to pass over the small space of
sea which separated me from Europe.

I have sometimes wished to compare the grandest of human productions
with the works of the Creator; the comparison is by no means
favourable to the former, for all those useless ornaments are nothing
but lasting proofs of pride, and of the fanaticism of a few men, who
were obeyed by a people in slavery. I also saw all that remained of
the traces of destruction committed by two of the greatest conquerors
of the world: the first was but a haughty despot, causing cohorts of
slaves to act as he pleased, and carrying the sword and destruction
amongst peaceful people, to profane their tombs, to follow up useless
conquests,--history afterwards shows him dying of an orgie; and the
other, alas! was enchained to a rock.

From the summit of one of the Pyramids, in religious abstraction, I
had contemplated the majestic Nile, which glides serpent-like through
a vast plain, bordered by the Desert and arid mountains. Looking,
then, below me, I could with difficulty descry some of my travelling
companions, who were gazing at the Sphinx, and who appeared like little
spots on the sand. And I then exclaimed: "It is not these useless
monuments that we ought to admire, but rather this magnificent river,
which, in obedience to the laws of all-powerful wisdom, overflows
every year, at a fixed period, its limits, and spreads itself, like
a vast sea, to water and to vivify these immense plains, which are
afterwards covered with rich harvests. If this immutable and beneficent
order of Nature did not endure, all these fertile districts would be
but a desert waste, where no living creature could exist."