selves, and stoop again, and sing. The sun gleams on
their copper skins, which look polished and metallic. Crouched in his
net behind the drowsy oxen, the little boy circles the livelong day with
the sakieh. And the sakieh raises its wailing, wayward voice and sings
to the shadoof; and the shadoof sings to the sakieh; and the lifted
water falls and flows away into the green wilderness of doura that, like
a miniature forest, spreads on every hand to the low mountains, which do
not perturb the spirit, as do the iron mountains of Algeria. And always
the sun is shining, and the body is drinking in its warmth, and the soul
is drinking in its gold. And always the ears are full of warm and drowsy
and monotonous music. And always the eyes see the lines of brown bodies,
on the brown river-banks above the brown waters, bending, straightening,
bending, straightening, with an exquisitely precise monotony. And always
the _Loulia_ seems to be drifting, so quietly she slips up, or down, the
level waterway.

And one drifts, too; one can but drift, happily, sleepily, forgetting
every care. From Abydos to Denderah one drifts, and from Denderah to
Karnak, to Luxor, to all the marvels on the western shore; and on
to Edfu, to Kom Ombos, to Assuan, and perhaps even into Nubia, to
Abu-Simbel, and to Wadi-Halfa. Life on the Nile is a long dream, golden
and sweet as honey of Hymettus. For I let the "divine serpent," who at
Philae may be seen issuing from her charmed cavern, take me very quietly
to see the abodes of the dead, the halls of the vanished, upon her green
and sterile shores. I know nothing of the bustling, shrieking
steamer that defies her, churning into angry waves her waters for the
edification of those who would "do" Egypt and be gone before they know
her.

If you are in a hurry, do not come to Egypt. To hurry in Egypt is as
wrong as to fall asleep in Wall street, or to sit in the Greek Theatre
at Taormina, reading "How to Make a Fortune with a Capital of Fifty
Pounds."

VI

DENDERAH

From Abydos, home of the cult of Osiris, Judge of the Dead, I came
to Denderah, the great temple of the "Lady of the Underworld," as the
goddess Hathor was sometimes called, though she was usually worshipped
as the Egyptian Aphrodite, goddess of joy, goddess of love and
loveliness. It was early morning when I went ashore. The sun was above
the eastern hills, and a boy, clad in a rope of plaited grass, sent me
half shyly the greeting, "Ma