, her arms crossed on her
knees and her knees up to her chin. From the garden wall, the plain
stretched to the foot of the Libyan chain like a yellow sea over which
the least breath of air drove waves of gold. The light was so intense
that the golden tone of the grain whitened in places and became silvery.
In the rich mud of the Nile the grain had grown strong, straight, and
high like javelins, and never had a richer harvest, flaming and
crackling with heat, been outspread in the sun. The crop was abundant
enough to fill up to the ceiling the range of vaulted granaries which
rose near the cellars.

The workmen had already been a long while at work, and here and there
out of the waves of the corn showed their woolly or close-shaven heads
covered with pieces of white stuff, and their naked torsos the colour of
baked brick. They bent and rose with a regular motion, cutting the grain
just below the ear, as regularly as if they had followed a line marked
out by a cord. Behind them in the furrows walked the gleaners with
esparto bags, in which they placed the harvested ears, and which they
then carried on their shoulders, or suspended from a cross-bar and with
the help of a companion, to grinding-mills situated some distance apart.
Sometimes the breathless harvesters stopped to take breath, and putting
their sickles under their right arm drank a draught of water. Then they
quickly resumed their work, fearing the foreman's stick.

The harvested grain was spread on the threshing-floor in layers evened
with a pitchfork, and slightly higher on the edges on account of the
additional basketfuls which were being poured on.

Then Poeri signed to the ox-driver to bring on his animals. They were
superb oxen with long horns, curved like the head-dress of Isis, with
high withers, deep dewlaps, clean, muscular limbs; the brand of the
estate, stamped with a red-hot iron, showed upon their flanks. They
walked slowly, bearing a horizontal yoke which bore equally upon the
heads of the four.

They were driven on to the threshing-floor; urged by the double-lashed
whip, they began to trample in a circle, making the grain spring from
the ear under their cloven hoofs; the sun shone on their lustrous coats,
and the dust which they raised ascended to their nostrils, so that after
going around about twenty times, they would lean one against another,
and in spite of the hissing whip which lashed their flanks, they would
unmistakably slacken their