n the summit of the pylon, passed a couple of hours
with great delight there.

The province of Ka was a fertile plain. A number of canals and branches
of the Nile passed through it in every direction, like a network of
silver and lapis lazuli. Melons and wheat sown in November were
ripening. On the fields were crowds of naked people who were gathering
cucumbers or planting cotton. The land was covered with small buildings
which at points were close together and formed villages.

Most of the dwellings, especially those in the fields, were mud huts
covered with straw and palm leaves. In the towns the houses were
walled, had flat roofs, and looked like white cubes with holes in
places where there were doors and windows. Very often on such a cube
was another somewhat smaller, and on that a third still smaller, and
each story was painted a different color. Under the fiery sun of Egypt
those houses looked like great pearls, sapphires, and rubies, scattered
about on the green of the fields, and surrounded by palms and acacias.

From that place Ramses saw a phenomenon which arrested his attention.
Near the temples the houses were more beautiful, and more people were
moving in the fields about them.

"The lands of the priests are the most valuable," thought he; and once
again he ran over with his eyes the temples great and small, of which
he saw between ten and twenty from the pylon.

But since he had agreed with Herhor, and needed the services of the
priesthood, he did not care to occupy himself longer with that problem.

In the course of the following days the worthy Sofra arranged a series
of hunts for Ramses, setting out toward the east from Atribis. Around
the canals they shot birds with arrows; some they snared in an immense
net trap which took in a number of tens of them, or they let out
falcons against those which were flying at freedom. When the prince's
retinue entered the eastern desert, great hunts began with dogs and
panthers against wild beasts. Of these they killed and seized, in the
course of some days, a couple of hundred.

When the worthy Sofra noticed that the prince had had enough of
amusement in the open air and of company intents, he ceased hunting and
brought his guest by the shortest road to Atribis.

They arrived about four hours after midday, and the nomarch invited all
to a feast in his palace.

He conducted the prince to a bath, he assisted at the bathing, and
brought out from his own chest