do I write in misery of heart before I die, because Kor
the Imperial is no more, and because there are none to worship in her
temple, and all her palaces are empty, and her princes and her captains
and her traders and her fair women have passed off the face of the
earth."

I gave a sigh of astonishment--the utter desolation depicted in this
rude scrawl was so overpowering. It was terrible to think of this
solitary survivor of a mighty people recording its fate before he too
went down into darkness. What must the old man have felt as, in ghastly
terrifying solitude, by the light of one lamp feebly illuminating a
little space of gloom, he in a few brief lines daubed the history of his
nation's death upon the cavern wall? What a subject for the moralist, or
the painter, or indeed for any one who can think!

"Doth it not occur to thee, oh Holly," said Ayesha, laying her hand upon
my shoulder, "that those men who sailed North may have been the fathers
of the first Egyptians?"

"Nay, I know not," I said; "it seems that the world is very old."

"Old? Yes, it is old indeed. Time after time have nations, ay, and rich
and strong nations, learned in the arts, been and passed away and
been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of
several; for Time eats up the works of man, unless, indeed, he digs in
caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows them, or
the earthquake shakes them in. Who knows what hath been on the earth, or
what shall be? There is no new thing under the sun, as the wise Hebrew
wrote long ago. Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think.
Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But
the barbarians from the south, or perchance my people, the Arabs,
came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the
Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and
behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers' bones.[*] But I know
not: who can know? My arts cannot pierce so far into the blackness of
Time's night. A great people were they. They conquered till none were
left to conquer, and then they dwelt at ease within their rocky mountain
walls, with their man servants and their maid servants, their minstrels,
their sculptors, and their concubines, and traded and quarrelled, and
ate and hunted and slept and made merry till their time came. But come,
I will show thee the great pit beneath the cave whereof th