d not make
any advances to me, and did not seek to be caressed, but maintained a
proud and melancholy reserve.

Little girls in blue gowns and little negroes in white tunics came up to
the carriages, offering pastry, cakes, bitter oranges, lemons, and
apples,--yes, apples. Eastern people seem to be very fond of that acid
Northern fruit which, along with wretched, granulous pears, forms part
of every dessert, at which of course one never gets either pomegranates,
or bananas, or dates, or oranges, or purple figs, or any native fruits,
which are no doubt left to the common people.

The whistle of the engine sounded, and we were again carried away
through that very humid and very green Delta. However, as we advanced
there showed on the horizon lines of rosy land from which vegetable life
was wholly absent. The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as
sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and
beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by
dusty foam, as upon a reef which it endeavours to cover up. In Egypt,
whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death. There
is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant
vegetation, there not a blade of grass, not a bit of moss, not a single
one of the adventurous plants which grow in solitary and lonely
places,--nothing but ground-up sandstone without any mixture of loam.
But if a drop of Nile water falls upon it, straightway the barren sand
is covered with verdure. These strips of pale salmon-colour form a
pleasant contrast with the rich tints of the great plain of verdure
spread out before us.

Soon we came upon another arm of the Nile, the Phatnitic branch, which
flows into the sea near Damietta. It is crossed by the railway, and on
the other side lie the ruins of ancient Athrebys, over which has been
built a fellahin village. The train sped along, and soon on the right,
above the line of green, turning almost black in the dazzling light,
showed in the azure distance the triangular silhouette of the pyramids
of Cheops and Chephren, appearing, from where I first beheld them, like
a single mountain with a piece taken out of the summit. The marvellous
clearness of the atmosphere made them appear nearer, and had I not been
aware of the real distance I should have found it difficult to estimate
it correctly. It is quite natural to catch sight of the pyramids as one
approaches Cairo; it is to be exp