over the neck. My helmet was a burden to me when first I wore it, and I took a hint from Sami Bey, remembering that this was his land and he knew how to battle with the sun. By the aid of the Marquis i obtained a coiffe de chapeau of heavy silk, orange and green, about a yard or more square. This I bound over my Turkish fez so that it would drape my face and fall over the shoulders. So when the sun came I had only to draw the web over my brow and throw the folds over my shoulders and ride on. A!though much heavier than any ordinary hat, and apparently oppressive from its texture and the lapping folds, there was no discomfort. The power of the sun was set at naught. Whatever breeze might be stirring was sure to creep into the folds and toy with my cheeks. Then there was an artistic sense to satisfy. It lit up the landscape. You could be seen from afar, and as the dress was that of a high Bedouin chief-of an Arab officer of rank-you knew that you were more than a pilgrim; that you were the symbol of authority to wandering desert eyes far away, who saw your flaming head-dresss treaming over the sand, and felt you were a great pacha.

"Here," said Brugsch, as we dismounted from our donkeys and followed him into the ruins of the temples, "here we should all take off our hats, for here is the cradle, the fountain head of all the civilization of the world." This was a startling statement, but Brugsch is a serious gentleman and does not make extravagant speeches. Then he told us about Abydos, which lay around us in ruins. This was the oldest city in Egypt. It went back to Menes, the first of the Egyptian kings, who, according to Brugsch, reigned 4,500 years before Christ-centuries before Abraham came to Egypt. It is hard to dispute a fact like this, and one of the party ventured to ask whether the civilization of China and India did not antedate, or claim to

antedate, even Abydos. To be sure it did, but in China and India you have traditions; here are monuments. Here, under the sands that we were crunching with our feet, here first flowed forth that civilization which has streamed over the world. Hebrew, Indian, Etruscan, Persian, Roman, Greek, Christian-whatever form you give it,

whatever shape it takes-this the fountain of it all.. Stanley had been telling me a few days ago, as we sat at breakfast at Alexandria, of the emotions he felt when he came to the sources of the Nile, where a trickling of water that you might arrest and imprison within the goblet's brim, set out on its mighty journey to the sea. I recalled the enthusiasm of my illustrious and intrepid friend as I thought that here was the source of another Nile that had been flowing for ages, that had enriched the world even as the river enriches these plains with all the arts and civilization and religion known to man, and that it was flowing,

and still flowing, with growing volume and riches. You see I am a believer. I came to these lands with reverence and have faith in their stones. I shall never know much about Egypt; I am afraid I shall never care enough for it to enter into the controversies about time and men that adorn Egyptian literature. I believe in the stones, and here are the stones on which are written the names of the kings from Menes to Sethi I. Sethi built this temple somewhere about fourteen hundred years before Christ, and, like a dutiful king, he wrote the names of his predecessors, seventy-six in all, beginning with Menes. Here is the stone which Brugsch reads as though it were the morning lesson, reading as one who believes. Here is the very stone, beautifully engraved, and, thanks to the sand, kept all these centuries as fresh as when the sculptor laid down his chisel. It was only found in 1865, and is, perhaps, the most valuable of the monuments, because it knits up the unraveled threads of Egyptian history and gives you a continuous link from this day to the day of Moses. You pass your fingers over the stone and note how beautiful and clear are the lines. And as you see it, you see the manifest honesty of the men who did the work, of the king who told all he knew, and of the truth of what was written. I believe in the stone and feel, as I said a moment ago, a little of the enthusiasm of Stanley when he stood at the trickling source of the Nile.

So we follow Brugsch out of the chamber and from ruined wall to wall. The ruins are on a grand scale. Abydos is a temple which the Khedive is rescuing from the sand. The city was in its time of considerable importance, but this was ages ago, ages and ages; so that its glory was dead even before Thebes began to reign. Thebes is an old city, and yet I suppose, compared with Thebes, Abydos is as much older as one of the buried Aztec towns