ed quay, stables were erected and plots of ground fenced in for
beasts of all kinds. The whole place looked like a cattle-fair, and
indeed it was a great resort of the butchers and horse-dealers of the
town, who came there to purchase. The palm-grove, being one of the few
remaining close to the city, also served the Memphites as a
pleasure-ground where they could "sniff fresh air" and treat themselves
in a pleasant shade. 'Tables and seats had been set out close to the
river, and there were boats on hire in mine host's little creek; and
those who took their pleasure in coming thither by water were glad to put
in and refresh themselves under the palms of Nesptah.

Two rows of houses had formerly divided this rendezvous for the sober and
the reckless from the highroad, but they had long since been pulled down
and laid level with the ground by successive landlords. Even now some
hundreds of laborers might be seen, in spite of the scorching heat,
toiling under Arab overseers to demolish a vast ruin of the date of the
Ptolemies. and transporting the huge blocks of limestone and marble, and
the numberless columns which once had supported the roof of the temple of
Zeus, to the eastern shore of the Nile-loading them on to trucks drawn by
oxen which hauled them down to the quay to cross the river in
flat-bottomed boats.

Amru, the Khaliff's general and representative, was there building his
new capital. For this the temples of the old gods were used as quarries,
and they supplied not only finely-squared blocks of the most durable
stone, but also myriads of Greek columns of every order, which had only
to be ferried over and set up again on the other shore; for the Arabs
disdained nothing in the way of materials, and made indiscriminate use of
blocks and pillars in their own sanctuaries, whether they took them from
heathen temples or Christian churches.

The walls of the temple of Imhotep had originally been completely covered
with pictures of the gods, and hieroglyphic inscriptions; but the smoke
of reeking hearths had long since blackened them, fanatical hands had
never been wanting to deface them, and in many places they had been
lime-washed and scrawled with Christian symbols or very unchristian
mottoes, in Greek and the spoken dialect of the Egyptians. The Arab and
his men took their meal in what had been the great hall of the
temple--none of them drinking wine excepting the captain of the caravan,
who was no Moslem but bel