where now sits pride, wealth and fraud
Pampered in purpled power--
The lizard, the bat and the wolf
Shall hold their habitation;
And the vine and the rag-weed
Swaying in the whistling winds
Shall sing their mournful requiem.
The silence of dark Babylon
Shall brood where millions struggled,
And naught shall be heard in cruel Rome,
But the wail of the midnight storm,
Echoing among the broken columns
Of its lofty, vanished glory--
Where vain, presumptive, midget man
Promised himself Immortality!_

After five days of sightseeing we took the public stage for Milan, guarded
by soldiers, and arrived safely on board the Albion, which sailed away,
through the Strait of Messina, around classic Greece to Negropont and on to
Alexandria, Egypt, where we anchored for a load of dates, figs and Persian
spices.

William and myself took a boat up the Nile to Cairo, and hired a guide to
steer us over the desert to the far-famed Pyramids.

There in the wild waste of desert sands these monuments to forgotten kings
and queens lift their giant peaks, appealing to the centuries for
recognition, but although the great granite stone memorials still remain as
a wonder to mankind, the dark, silent mummies that sleep within and around
these funereal emblems give back no sure voice as to when and where they
lived, rose and fell in the long night of Egyptian darkness.

Remains of vast buried cities are occasionally exposed by the shifting,
searching storm winds of the desert, and many a modern Arab has cooked his
frugal breakfast by splinters picked up from the bones of his ancestors.

It was night when we got to the Pyramids, and we concluded to camp with an
Arab and his family at the base of the great Cheops until next morning, and
then before sunrise scale its steep steps and lofty crest.

A few silver coins insured us a warm greeting from the "Arab family," who
seemed to vie with each other in preparing a hot supper and clean couches.

They sang their desert songs until nearly midnight, the daughter Cleo
playing on the harp with dextrous fingers, and throwing a soft soprano
voice upon the air, like the tones of an angel, echoing over a bank of wild
flowers.

Standing on the pinnacle of the Pyramid William again struck one of his
theatrical attitudes, and with outstretched hands exclaimed:

_Immortal Sol! Image of Omnipotence!
To thee lift I my soul in pure devotion;