Though I have at times smoked out a cigar while watching an incessant stream of these women coming down to, and going up from, the watering-place, I never heard one speak to another. I suppose they reserve what they have to say till they can say it unobserved by the bearded sex. Nor did I ever see one of them cast a glance upon a stranger. I quite believe what a native told me of them—that it would be regarded as a portent, if one of the very poorest class were in the least to commit herself in this way. I once saw one of my companions—a tall, good-looking young fellow—walk up to a damsel as good-looking as himself, who had filled her goolleh, and set it on the edge of the stream till she had washed her feet. As she turned round for it, he lifted it for her, and placed it on her head. I narrowly watched her face. She ought to have been somewhat taken by surprise, for she knew not that he was behind her; but of this there was no indication. She did not look at him, or move a feature: there was no apparent consciousness of any one being present. The instant the jar was on her head, she walked away just as she would have done, had it been her sister who had lifted it for her. One is astonished at the mountains of broken crockery, or pottery, which mark the sites of the ancient cites. That well nigh all the water used in Egypt, for so many thousands of years, has had to be carried in these earthen jars—for there is no wood in Egypt to make bowls and buckets—and that the cooking utensils of the mass of the people must be made of the same fragile material—for Egypt, except in times of unusual prosperity, has no metals cheap enough for this purpose—will account for no inconsiderable part of the accumulations. These shards have gone a long way towards forming the barrows in which lie buried Abydos, Memphis, Esné, Edfou, Thebes, Dendera, and scores of other places. The importance, in its day, of any one of these ages-ago-effaced cities may be roughly estimated by observing the magnitude of the barrow in which it is buried. The mounds at Alexandria—and even already at modern Cairo—are of surprising dimensions. Had they brought up the water from the river in wooden buckets, which would have decayed, or had they cooked in metal utensils—the materials of which, when they became unserviceable for cooking, would have been turned to some other account—these mounds would have been less conspicuous objects than they are now. CHAPTER XLVII. WANT OF WOOD IN EGYPT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. The trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.—_Isaiah._