But what took me to On was not to see the tree, but that I might stand before the Obelisk of Osirtasen, the oldest obelisk in Egypt, which has been pointing to the sky now for more than four thousand years—from the days of the old monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos. To them we may feel thankful for having allowed it to stand; and there was no International in those days. It had been erected for some centuries, when Abraham came down into Egypt. Joseph and Moses, who had both been admitted to the Priest Caste, and were learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, stood before it, and read the inscription, word for word, as the erudite Egyptologer reads it this day. Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato all studied here. Heliopolis was then the most celebrated university in the world for philosophy and science. Strabo was shown the house in which Plato had resided. Herodotus found the priests here in better repute for their learning than any elsewhere in Egypt. All these, and a host of other well-known Greeks, Romans, and Jews resided and studied here, during the many centuries of its renown. They all visited again and again, and walked round and deciphered, or had deciphered to them, the inscription on each side of this spit of granite. In those days it seemed to them a wonderful monument of hoar antiquity—far beyond anything that could be seen in their own countries. Everything they then saw at Heliopolis has been reduced to mounds of rubbish now, excepting this single stone. What a halo of interest invests it! Who would not wish to see it? Who can be unmoved as he looks upon it? Fifty centuries of history, and all the wisdom of Egypt are buried in the dust under his feet. You shift your position, and then smile at yourself—a sort of feeling had come upon you that you were obstructing the view of Joseph, or of Herodotus; that you were standing in the way of Plato, or of Moses. But though the carking tooth of time has in no way set its mark on the monument of Osirtasen, a small fly has for the present obliterated, on three sides of it, the record he placed upon them. It has done this by filling up the incised hieroglyphics with its mud-cells. Whether it be a mason-wasp, or a bee, I was unable to discover, the cells being out of reach. I saw the same temporary eclipse of the sculptures and hieroglyphics going on at Dendera and elsewhere. The venom of this little insect is, I was told, equal to what I saw of its impudence. The drive to Heliopolis is well worth taking on its own account. I found by the wayside a greater variety of culture, and of plants, than elsewhere in Egypt; oranges, lemons, ricinus, (which, with its spikes of red flowers and broad leaves, is, here, a handsome plant,) cactuses, vineyards, olive-trees, Australian eucalyptuses, and many other trees and plants.