I had not even the foundation, upon which Dr. Young, and Lepsius, and De Lacy, and Champollion commenced. There were no living Copts, who spoke a dialect of the dead tongue in which the historian had engraved his annals. There were no descendants of the extinct nations, whose sole memorials were the crumbling ruins before me. Time had left no teacher whose lessons might result in success. Tradition even, with her uncertain light, threw no flickering glare around, by which the groping archæologist might weave an imaginary tale of the past. "Chaos of ruins, who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, '_Here was_, _or is_,' where all is doubly night?" CHAPTER III. "I must except, however, the attempt to explore an aqueduct, which we made together. Within, it was perfectly dark, and we could not move without candles. The sides were of smooth stones, about four feet high, and the roof was made by stones lapping over like the corridors of the buildings. At a short distance from the entrance, the passage turned to the left, and at a distance of one hundred and sixty feet it was completely blocked up by the ruins of the roof which had fallen down."--INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN CHIAPAS. One day I had been unusually busy in arranging my drawings and forming them into something like system, and toward evening, had taken my seat, as I always did, just in front of the large _basso-rilievo_ ornamenting the main entrance into the corridor of the palace, when Pio approached me from behind and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Not having observed his approach, I was startled by the suddenness of the contact, and sprang to my feet, half in surprise and half in alarm. He had never before been guilty of such an act of impoliteness, and I was on the eve of rebuking him for his conduct, when I caught the kind and intelligent expression of his eye, which at once disarmed me, and attracted most strongly my attention. Slowly raising his arm, he pointed with the forefinger of his right hand to the entablature before us and began to whistle most distinctly, yet most musically, a low monody, which resembled the cadencial rise and fall of the voice in reading poetry. Occasionally, his tones would almost die entirely away, then rise very high, and then modulate themselves with the strictest regard to rhythmical measure. His finger ran rapidly over the hieroglyphics, first from left to right, and then from right to left.