Leaving Cairo, I crossed the fine iron bridge which spans the Nile and is guarded by great bronze lions at each end. I passed the tax office; I saw farmers bringing chickens, pigeons, and grass or vegetables into Cairo and stopping to pay a tax upon them before they could offer them for sale. On I went past a branch of the Nile, where naked men stood in the water and slapped clothes up and down on stones in washing them; by wells where women were filling great jars with water and bearing them away upon their heads, as they did in the days of Rachel when Jacob gave her that kiss and made the scene which the Italian artists love to paint; and on out into the country, through this greenest of the green valley of Egypt. I went by caravans of camels ridden by Bedouins who were carrying merchandise into Cairo to sell. The air was as fresh as America in springtime, and the sweet scent of the grass and the clover was blown into my face by the bracing wind from the desert. I saw the Pyramids when I left the city. They increased rapidly in size as I came nearer to them, and at the edge of the desert they looked at first like huge heaps of stone. Disappointment came over me. I felt that the travellers of all ages had lied. Half a mile farther and I was at their base. Now I changed my opinion. The Pyramids are more wonderful than they have ever been painted, and their immensity grows upon one more and more as he looks. As I stood in the middle of one of the sides of the Great Pyramid, it seemed as though the whole sky were walled with stone. The top towered above my head, almost kissing the white clouds which sometimes float in this clear Egyptian sky.