More impressive by far than the weightiest array of figures or the most striking comparisons, was the shadow cast by the great pyramid as the sun went down. That mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony platform of the desert and over full three quarters of a mile of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, just as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air; and it darkened the space it covered, like an eclipse. It was not without a thrill of something approaching to awe that one remembered how this self-same shadow had gone on registering not only the height of the most stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage day by day of more than sixty centuries of the world’s history. It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went down the long sand-slope and regained the carriage. Some six or eight Arabs in fluttering white garments ran on ahead to bid us a last good-by. That we should have driven over from Cairo only to sit quietly down and look at the great pyramid had filled them with unfeigned astonishment. With such energy and dispatch as the modern traveler uses, we might have been to the top and seen the temple of the Sphinx and done two or three of the principal tombs in the time. “You come again!” said they. “Good Arab show you everything. You see nothing this time!” So, promising to return ere long, we drove away; well content, nevertheless, with the way in which our time had been spent. The pyramid Bedouins have been plentifully abused by travelers and guide-books, but we found no reason to complain of them now or afterward. They neither crowded round us, nor followed us, nor importuned us in any way. They are naturally vivacious and very talkative; yet the gentle fellows were dumb as mutes when they found we wished for silence. And they were satisfied with a very moderate bakhshîsh at parting. As a fitting sequel to this excursion, we went, I think next day, to see the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which is one of those mediæval structures said to have been built with the casing-stones of the great pyramid. CHAPTER II. CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE.