"They fulfil a duty, though, I suppose," said Frank. "Yes, and a very necessary one," replied the professor; and this was evident a short time after, although the leading camel passed to windward of the heap, and it seemed to Frank that the animal he rode turned up the corners of its pendulous lips with a look of the most supreme disgust, as it turned its head slightly in the other direction. "That's fancy, Frank," said the professor, as the young man drew his attention to the camel's aspect. "I believe the poor beasts are so accustomed to the sight that they take it as a matter of course." "Is it so common, then?" "Horribly common, and I hope we shall encounter nothing worse, but from what has been going on farther south I have my doubts." Frank rode on silently, and the professor did not speak for a few minutes. Then-- "Human life has always been held cheap out here. If we were travelling to examine the old records I could show you them cut in stone, as you can see them in the museums in Cairo, or in London when we return, the bragging, boasting blasphemies of this or that conquering king, all to the same tune--`I came, I saw, I conquered; I slew so many thousands of the people--I took so many thousands into captivity--I built this temple to the gods--I raised this obelisk or that pyramid'--and all by hand labour, with the miserable, belaboured slaves dying by their thousands upon thousands under their taskmasters' lashes, to be cast afterwards into the Nile, or left to the jackals and vultures. These and the crocodiles have always been wanted here, Frank, and as it has been so it is now. There is always an `I'--a very, very big capital `I'--who is glorifying himself with slaughter." "No conquering king now, though," said Frank, "to leave his victories cut in the stones." "No, the slaughterers here nowadays are more barbarous. Not the city-building monarchs, but the nomadic chiefs who force themselves to the height of power with their horrible religious despotism--your Mahdis. It is a wonder that they find so many followers, but they do." "Fanaticism, I suppose," said Frank. "Yes, that and the love of conquest, with its additions in the shape of plunder. For years past these vast tracts of fertile land bordering the river have gone back to waste, village after village of industrious people having been massacred or forced to flee for their lives." "But--I have read so little about the Khedival rule--why has not the Egyptian Government put a stop to all this frightful persecution?" "From want of power, my lad. The country has been too big, the army too small, and the invading tribes from the south too warlike a fighting race to be withstood. There is the consequence--a smiling land, irrigated by the mighty river which brings down the rich tropic mud from the highlands of the south, utterly depopulated, and strewn with the wretched people's bones."