I need scarcely say that we did not see half the wall-sculptures or even half the chambers that first afternoon at Abou Simbel. We rambled to and fro, lost in wonder and content to wonder, like rustics at a fair. We had, however, ample time to come again and again, and learn it all by heart. The writer went in constantly and at all hours; but most frequently at the end of the day’s sketching, when the rest were walking or boating in the cool of the late afternoon. It is a wonderful place to be alone in--a place in which the very darkness and silence are old and in which time himself seems to have fallen asleep. Wandering to and fro among these sculptured halls, like a shade among shadows, one seems to have left the world behind; to have done with the teachings of the present: to belong one’s self to the past. The very gods assert their ancient influence over those who question them in solitude. Seen in the fast-deepening gloom of evening, they look instinct with supernatural life. There were times when I should scarcely have been surprised to hear them speak--to see them rise from their painted thrones and come down from the walls. There were times when I felt I believed in them. There was something so weird and awful about the place, and it became so much more weird and awful the farther one went in, that I rarely ventured beyond the first hall when quite alone. One afternoon, however, when it was a little earlier, and therefore a little lighter than usual, I went to the very end and sat at the feet of the gods in the sanctuary. All at once (I cannot tell why, for my thoughts just then were far away) it flashed upon me that a whole mountain hung--ready, perhaps, to cave in--above my head. Seized by a sudden panic such as one feels in dreams, I tried to run; but my feet dragged and the floor seemed to sink under them. I felt I could not have called for help, though it had been to save my life. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to add that the mountain did not cave in, and that I had my fright for nothing. It would have been a grand way of dying, all the same; and a still grander way of being buried. My visits to the great temple were not always so dramatic. I sometimes took Salame, who smoked cigarettes when not on active duty, or held a candle while I sketched patterns of cornices, head-dresses of kings and gods, designs of necklaces and bracelets, heads of captives, and the like. Sometimes we explored the side-chambers. Of these there are eight; pitch-dark, and excavated at all kinds of angles. Two or three are surrounded by stone benches cut in the rock; and in one the hieroglyphic inscriptions are part cut, part sketched in black and left unfinished. As this temple is entirely the work of Rameses II, and betrays no sign of having been added to by any of his successors, these evidences of incompleteness would seem to show that the king died before the work was ended.