Then it appeared that Talhamy, knowing how eight donkeys would be wanted for our united forces, had sent up to the village for twenty-five, intending, perhaps with more wisdom than justice, to select the best and dismiss the others. The result was overwhelming. Misled by the magnitude of the order and concluding that Cook’s party had arrived, every man, boy and donkey in Bedreshayn and the neighboring village of Mîtrahîneh had turned out in hot haste and rushed down to the river; so that by the time breakfast was over there were steeds enough in readiness for all the English in Cairo. I pass over the tumult that ensued when our party at last mounted the eight likeliest beasts and rode away, leaving the indignant multitude to disperse at leisure. And now our way lies over a dusty flat, across the railway line, past the long straggling village, and through the famous plantations known as the Palms of Memphis. There is a crowd of patient-looking fellaheen at the little whitewashed station, waiting for the train, and the usual rabble of clamorous water, bread and fruit sellers. Bedreshayn, though a collection of mere mud-hovels, looks pretty, nestling in the midst of stately date-palms. Square pigeon towers, imbedded round the top with layers of wide-mouthed pots and stuck with rows of leafless acacia boughs like ragged banner poles, stand up at intervals among the huts. The pigeons go in and out of the pots, or sit preening their feathers on the branches. The dogs dash out and bark madly at us as we go by. The little brown children pursue us with cries of “Bakhshïsh!” The potter, laying out rows of soft, gray, freshly molded clay bowls and kullehs[9] to bake in the sun, stops, open-mouthed, and stares as if he had never seen a European till this moment. His young wife snatches up her baby and pulls her veil more closely over her face, fearing the evil eye. The village being left behind, we ride on through one long palm-grove after another; now skirting the borders of a large sheet of tranquil back-water; now catching a glimpse of the far-off pyramids of Ghîzeh, now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crumbled clay which mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here spreads out like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. High on this barren plateau, seen for the first time in one unbroken panoramic line, there stand a solemn company of pyramids; those of Sakkârah straight before us, those of Dahshûr to the left, those of Abusîr to the right and the great pyramids of Ghîzeh always in the remotest distance.