The mounted rifles, artillery and engineers daily exercised their horses and teams until it was possible to have squadron and battery training. Out in the hot sun all day, by diligence and care, men and horses became efficient units in the great machine. The way was not always a sandy one; sometimes the route lay along the banks of the irrigation canals, past ancient sakiehs and Archimedean screws lifting the precious water into the little tributary canals that are the life of Egypt. Past fields of wheat and tomatoes; acres of beans reminding one of Thoreau's sojourn in the wilds; down scented orange groves and acacia avenues; through acres and acres of the clover known as berseem--the soldiers went their way, marvelling at the fertility of a land that produces three crops within the year. On those fresh dewy mornings, with the crows chattering noisily in the trees overhead, one realized what made Egypt triumph over Time. These simple fellaheen and their forbears had watched Hittite, Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman sweep through the country and ravish its beauty, to be followed in later days by Saracen and Turk with the same intent; and here, long years after, following in the great line of fighting men, but striving for freedom and not conquest, the soldiers from the Antipodes, glorying in their youth, pass the old obelisk at Heliopolis and recognize that, perhaps more than pride of race, a fertile soil and a diligent husbandry make for national longevity. [Illustration: [_Photo by the Author_ CATTLE ON BERSEEM. Berseem is a variety of lucerne, and is the staple green food of camels, horses, cattle, goats and sheep. It helps to keep the Nile Delta fertile.] [Illustration: "LIZZIE"] It may have been because of the church parades, where men sang the hymns they knew--hymns associated with their early life and Sunday school, or perhaps during the service men let their minds wander from the dust and glare of Egypt to the green fields and the loved ones of home--but whatever the cause, Sunday was essentially the day of letter writing. On Sunday afternoons, groups of men wandered farther afield--to the mighty Pyramids of Ghizeh, there to pose on the protesting camels for the conventional photograph of tourist, sphinx and pyramid; or perchance to the Zoo at Ghezireh, with its quaint mosaic paths, its giraffes and the bewitching "Lizzie," with her radiant smile and open countenance. Crowds were fascinated by the collection of antiquities in the Egyptian Museum, and by those polished cases in which, surrounded by great sphinxes and pylons, sleep the former kings of four and five thousand years ago. It is difficult to conceive that these were ever people of flesh and blood, until the revelation of mummified queens with their tiny babies forces one to realize that they, too, once were really human in their hates and loves, their triumphs and disappointments. [Illustration: [_Photo by the Author_ "MILK DIET."