I had men working at it for several days, trying to clear out the debris, but there seemed to be no end to it, and as one had to haul up every basket of stone to the top and then pass it from hand to hand along the tunnel, the difficulty was very great. The atmosphere, too, was very close and hot. Eventually we came to some large pieces of detached rock which we were unable to raise, and as the work had no appreciable result I finally gave it up. Some time afterwards I went to see the tombs of the kings at Thebes. My orderly, who had been at Siwa, was with me, and we were both struck by the similarity between the tombs of the kings and the underground place at Siwa, the latter of course being on a very small scale. Later, when I discovered that Siwa was at one time famous for its emerald mines, the idea suggested itself that this might have been an old mine. Unfortunately, not being an archæologist, I was unable to determine from the size and construction of the place whether it was likely to be a tomb or not. I afterwards discovered another passage, narrow but higher, cut into the outside of the rock about half-way down, apparently with the idea of tapping the shaft, but it only reached a few yards and then seemed to have been left uncompleted. Haj Gabreen, the old Fiki who went down the shaft with me, evidently spread a very fantastic rumour of my discoveries, because after I left Siwa I got messages from the Governor inquiring whether I really had found an iron door in the middle of the hill. There seemed to be an abnormally large number of old men in Siwa, as the climate is apparently conducive to old age. Siwans, like many other natives, are very vague about their own ages. Often if one asks them how old they are they reply, “Whatever age you would wish,” or sometimes, “The same age as your Excellency”—which they seem to consider a polite answer. Certainly most of the deaths that occur are those of young children or very old people. Considerable deference is paid to old age, although it may not always be accompanied by corresponding virtue. When I was at Siwa the “Oldest Inhabitant” was a wrinkled old man called Haj Suliman, the grandfather of one of the principal merchants. He used to spend most of his time sitting outside his house gossiping to the passers-by, and I often stopped to talk to him. Unfortunately he was deaf and had no teeth, so conversation between us was not very brisk. He and his relations told me that he was 102 years old; he looked about 90, and could not have been less than 85. He used to tell me about his one and only visit to Cairo, some sixty years ago, on his way home from Mecca. He also remembered and described quite clearly the visit of a certain English traveller to Siwa in 1869.