The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the Nile demands some little reading and organizing, if only to be enjoyed. We cannot all be profoundly learned; but we can at least do our best to understand what we see--to get rid of obstacles--to put the right thing in the right place. For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a great book--not very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances; but at all events quite difficult enough already without the added puzzlement of being read backward. And now our next point along the river, as well as our next link in the chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, with its famous rock-cut tombs of the twelfth dynasty; and Beni Hassan was still more than a hundred and forty-five miles distant. We ought to have gone on again directly--to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very evening on returning to the boats; but we insisted on a second day in the same place. This, too, with the favorable wind still blowing. It was against all rule and precedent. The captain shook his head, the dragoman remonstrated in vain. “You will come to learn the value of a wind when you have been longer on the Nile,” said the latter, with that air of melancholy resignation which he always assumed when not allowed to have his own way. He was an indolent, good-tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was perfectly manageable; but that air of resignation came to be aggravating in time. The M. B.’s being of the same mind, however, we had our second day, and spent it at Memphis. We ought to have crossed over to Turra and have seen the great quarries from which the casing-stones of the pyramids came, and all the finer limestone with which the temples and palaces of Memphis were built. But the whole mountain side seemed as if glowing at a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and we said we would put off Turra till our return. So we went our own way; and Alfred shot pigeons; and the writer sketched Mitrâhîneh and the palms and the sacred Lake of Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure, finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and part of an engraved bronze Apis; and we had a green, tranquil, lovely day, barren of incident, but very pleasant to remember.