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tasting them. Then came the coffee and the pipes. During the dinner, which was composed of the host and our own party, we had music. A group of Arab minstrels came in and squatted on the floor. The leader of the band-I should say about halfa-dozen-was blind, but his skill in handling his instrument was notable. It was a rude instrument, of the violin class, the body of it a cocoanut shell. He held it on the ground and played with a bow, very much as one would play a violoncello. He played love songs and narratives, and under the promptings of Sami Bey went through all the grades of his art. But whether the theme was love or war there came that sad refrain, that motive of despair, that seemed to speak from the soul and to tell of the unending misery of their race. Mr. Jesse Grant, who has a taste for music, was quite interested in the performance, and sought to teach the minstrels some of our European and American airs. One of them was the "Marseillaise." The Arab listened to it and tried again and again to follow the notes. He would follow for a few bars and break down, break into the same mournful cadence which had been the burden of his melody. It seemed strange, this burdened and beaten slave trying to grasp that wild, brave, bold anthem which spoke the resolve of a nation to be free. It was beyond and above him. The music of the "Marseillaise" was never intended for the Libyan desert. If these people, oppressed and driven as they are, should ever come to know it, there will be hope for this land of promise, which has so long been the land of sorrow and servitude.

We were to see the wonder of the world in Karnak. Karnak is only about forty minutes from Luxor, and does not involve crossing the river. I was grateful to the vice consul for sending us the same group of donkeys who had borne us to Memnon. And when I ascended the hill there was my friend Mohammed Ali jumping and calling and pushing his donkey toward me. A good donkey has much to do with the pleasure of your journey, and Mohammed Ali's was a patient, sure-footed little thing that it made me almost ashamed to ride. We set out early, because it was commanded by Sami Bey that we

should return to the boat and breakfast, and while at breakfast steam up the river.

I cannot tell you when the Temple of Karnak was built. You see, in this matter of chronology, authorities as high as Wilkinson, Bun

KARNAK.

cause of the famine in the land, taking with him Sarah, his wife, who was fair, and whom he passed off as his sister. And Abraham, rich in cattle and silver and gold, went back from Egypt to become the founder and father of his race? When we recall the story of Abraham's visit to Egypt it seems as if we were going back to the beginning of things, for we go back to the time of Lot, Melchisedec, Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, if Abraham on that visit had visited Thebes-and it is quite pos

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sible he did, especially after he became rich-he would have seen a part of this very temple of Karnak, and he could have read on its walls the very inscription which Brugsch translates to-day, and which would have told him, as it tells us, of the glory of a king who had reigned before him. It is, to the writer at least, this comparative chronology, this blending of the history you see on every temple and tomb with the history that came to us in childhood from the pious mother's knee, that gives Egypt its never-ceasing interest. You sit in the shadow of the column, sheltered from the imperious noonday sun-the same shade which, perhaps, sheltered Abraham as he sat and mused over his fortunes and yearned for his own land. The images are here; the legends are as legible as they were in his time. You sit in the shadow of the column, thinking about luncheon and home and your donkey, and hear the chattering of Arabs pressing relics upon you, or doing your part in merry, idle talk. It is hard to realize that in the infinite and awful past in the days when the Lord came down to the earth and communed with men and gave his commandments—these columns and statues, these plinths and entablatures, these mighty bending walls, upon which chaos has put its seal, were the shrines of a nation's faith and sovereignty. Yet this is all told in stone.

I find myself in a whirl in writing about Karnak, and the truth is I have put off again and again writing about it in the hope that some inspiration might come to make it all plain. What I or any of us, any hurried traveler from another world, may do or think, is of little value; and if I were to give you simply our personal experiences-how we came and strolled, how we climbed over masses of rubbish, how we clustered about Brugsch and heard him unravel the inscriptions on the walls, how we had our photographs taken, how we had a bit of luncheon quenched in grateful waters, it would be a page out of General Grant's experiences in Egypt, but it would tell nothing of Karnak. What I tried to do, at least as I rode around its walls, what in fact I have tried to do always in Egypt, is to bring back the temples as they were and picture them in their

splendor, and then look at them in their ruin. I fancied I did something of this at Dendoreh and Abydos and Et Foo-that I could really see what those temples must have been in their day-but Karnak sweeps beyond the imagination, so vast and solemn is the ruin.

Let me take refuge for a moment in some figures which I condense from the books and from what Brugsch tells me in conversation. Karnak, which was not only a temple, but one in the series of temples which constituted Thebes, is about a half mile from the river, a mile or two from the temple of Luxor. The front wall or propylon is 370 feet broad, 50 feet deep, and the standing tower 140 feet high.

this main entrance is an avenue lined with statues and sphinxes, 200 feet long. When you enter this gate you enter an open court-yard, 275 feet by 329. There is a corridor or cloister on either side; in the middle a double line of columns, of which one only remains. You now come to another wall, or propylon, as large as the entrance, and enter the great hall-the most magnificent ruin in Egypt. The steps of the door are 40 feet by 10. The room is 170 feet by 329, and the

Leading up to

gone.

Twelve are 62 feet

roof was supported by 134 columns. nearly all standing, but the roof has high without the plinth, and 11 feet 6 inches in diameter. One hundred and twenty-two are 42 feet 5 inches in height and 28 feet in circumference. They were all brilliantly colored, and some of them retain the colors still; and you can well imagine

what must have been the blaze of light and color when the kings and priests passed through in solemn procession. We pass through another gate into an open court. Here is an obelisk in granite seventy-five feet high, and the fragments of another, its companion. The inscriptions on them are as clear as though they had been cut yesterday, so gentle is this climate in its dealings with Time. They celebrate the victories and virtues of the kings who reigned seventeen hundred years before Christ, and promise the kings in the name of the immortal gods that their glory shall live for ages. We pass into another chamber very much in ruins and see another obelisk ninety-two feet high and eight square-the largest in the world. This monument commemorates the virtues of the king's daughter, womanly and queenly virtues, which met their reward, let us hope, thirty-five centuries ago. You may form some idea of what the Egyptians could do in the way of mechanics and engineering when you know that this obelisk is a single block of granite, that it was brought from the quarry miles and miles away, erected and inscribed in seven months. The next room was the sanctuary, the holy of holies, and is now a mass of rubbish requiring nimble feet to climb. You scramble over stones and sand until you come to what was the room where King Thothmes III., who lived sixteen centuries before Christ, was represented as giving offerings to fifty-six of his royal predecessors. The hall is a ruin, and some French vandals carried off the tablet-one of the most valuable in Egypt-to Paris. Altogether the building alone was 1,108 feet long and about 300 wide, the circuit around the outside, according to a Roman historian who saw it in its glory, being about a mile and a half.

This is the temple, but the temple was only a part. There were three avenues leading from it to the other temples. These avenues were lined with statues, large and small, generally of the sphinx. I saw numbers of them sitting in their ancient places slowly crumbling to ruin. There were two colossal statues at the door, now lying on the earth an uncouth mass of granite. One of them was almost buried in the sand, the ear being exposed. You can fancy how large it must have been