long the large and rapid waters of this river,
between the curtains of palm-trees on the banks, borne by a dahabiya
where one is master and, if one likes, may be alone.

At first, for a day or two, the great haunting triangles of the pyramids
seem to follow you, those of Dashur and that of Sakkarah succeeding
to those of Gizeh. For a long time the horizon is disturbed by their
gigantic silhouettes. As we recede from them, and they disengage
themselves better from neighbouring things, they seem, as happens in
the case of mountains, to grow higher. And when they have finally
disappeared, we have still to ascend slowly and by stages some six
hundred miles of river before we reach the first cataract. Our way lies
through monotonous desert regions where the hours and days are marked
chiefly by the variations of the wonderful light. Except for the
phantasmagoria of the mornings and evenings, there is no outstanding
feature on these dull-coloured banks, where may be seen, with never
a change at all, the humble pastoral life of the fellahs. The sun is
burning, the starlit nights clear and cold. A withering wind, which
blows almost without ceasing from the north, makes you shiver as soon as
the twilight falls.

One may travel for league after league along this slimy water and make
head for days and weeks against its current--which glides everlastingly
past the dahabiya, in little hurrying waves--without seeing this warm,
fecundating river, compared with which our rivers of France are mere
negligible streams, either diminish or increase or hasten. And on
the right and left of us as we pass are unfolded indefinitely the two
parallel chains of barren limestone, which imprison so narrowly the
Egypt of the harvests: on the west that of the Libyan desert, which
every morning the first rays of the sun tint with a rosy coral that
nothing seems to dull; and in the east that of the desert of Arabia,
which never fails in the evening to retain the light of the setting sun,
and looks then like a mournful girdle of glowing embers. Sometimes the
two parallel walls sheer off and give more room to the green fields, to
the woods of palm-trees, and the little oases, separated by streaks
of golden sand. Sometimes they approach so closely to the Nile that
habitable Egypt is no wider than some two or three poor fields of corn,
lying right on the water's edge, behind which the dead stones and the
dead sands commence at once. And sometimes, even, the