The custode told us that there were two hundred and forty-two steps to the top of each tower of the propylon. We counted two hundred and twenty-four, and dispensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long pull; but had the steps been four times as many, the sight from the top would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the pylons are on a grand scale, with wide beveled windows like the mouths of monster letter boxes, placed at regular intervals all the way up. Through these windows the great flagstaffs and pennons were regulated from within. The two pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above are plentifully scrawled with names, many of which were left there by the French soldiers of 1799. The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone; but the total height without them is one hundred and twenty-five feet. From the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at Damascus, one looks down into the heart of the town. Hundreds of mud huts thatched with palm-leaves, hundreds of little court-yards, lie mapped out beneath one’s feet; and as the fellah lives in his yard by day, using his hut merely as a sleeping-place at night, one looks down, like the Diable Boiteux, upon the domestic doings of a roofless world. We see people moving to and fro, unconscious of strange eyes watching them from above--men lounging, smoking, sleeping in shady corners--children playing--infants crawling on all fours--women cooking at clay ovens in the open air--cows and sheep feeding--poultry scratching and pecking--dogs basking in the sun. The huts look more like the lairs of prairie-dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque with its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley fields, and cotton patches, and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. It goes, they tell us, direct to Cairo. On the opposite bank glares a hideous white sugar factory, and, bowered in greenery, a country villa of the khedive. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban hills gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon.