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Surely in the old days of Egypt great ideas possessed the minds of men, and apart from the vastness of their other monuments, had ever kings before or since such impressive resting-places as the royal tombs cut deep into the bowels of the Theban hills, or the stupendous pyramids of Ghizeh!
And probably Napoleon's soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way; a thought which somehow made the thing seem less intolerable. We climbed to the vast platform of the Ghizeh Pyramids, and then plunged into the billows of the desert, in quest of the Sphinx. Sir Marcus was entitled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one to show us the way.
By some, the pyramid of Meydoun, built in three distinct stages to a height of 125 feet, is ascribed to him, and is believed to be his sepulcher. At Saccarah is a pyramid of like form, 200 feet in height. Khufu, the Cheops of Herodotus, was the builder of the "Great Pyramid" of Ghizeh, the largest and loftiest building on earth.
Unlike the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, which, even when one is near it, looks like a small mountain, part of the land on which it rests, the Pyramids of Ghizeh look what they are artificial excrescences, invented and carried out by man, expressions of man's greatness.
The Nile was hung with mist, a trailing cloud unwound from the breast of the Nile-mother. At last the sun touched the minarets of the splendid mosque with shafts of light, and over at Ghizeh and Sakkarah the great pyramids, lifting their heads from the wall of rolling blue mist below, took the morning's crimson radiance with the dignity of four thousand years.
In speaking of the pyramids it is always the pyramids of Ghizeh which are meant, for though there are a great many other pyramids in Egypt these are the largest, and being built upon the desert plateau, form such a commanding group that they dominate the landscape for miles around.
Human nature is weak and she has become a slavedriver, after all. But he is her only slave, and he hugs his bondage. Looking from the minaret the Two could see, far off, the Pyramids of Ghizeh and Sakkara, the wells of Helouan, the Mokattam Hills, the tombs of the Caliphs, the Khedive's palace at distant Abbasiyeh. Nearer by, the life of the city was spread out.
To those who take the road from Cap Haitien to Millot today, the existence of that ancient highway seems incredible. Yet, though only a century old, it is almost as hopelessly lost as the road in the Sahara Desert over which, once, toiling slaves in Egypt dragged the huge stones of which the Pyramids of Ghizeh were built. Stuart and the Cuban had made a late start.
Here and there a living thing moved slowly, wading homeward through this sea: a camel from the sands of Ghizeh, a buffalo, two donkeys, followed by boys who held with brown hands their dark blue skirts near their faces, a Bedouin leaning forward upon the neck of his quickly stepping horse. At one moment I seemed to look upon the lagoons of Venice, a watery vision full of a glassy calm.
As in approaching Cairo in Egypt, one sees first and while far away the pyramids of Ghizeh, and afterwards the graceful minarets and towers of the Oriental city gleaming through the golden haze; so as we gradually emerge from the thinly inhabited Russian plains and draw near the capital, first there comes into view the massive towers of the Kremlin and the Church of Our Saviour with its golden dome, followed by the hundreds of glittering steeples, belfries, towers, and star-gilded domes of this extremely interesting and ancient city.
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