"One of the temples that we visited was in a very ruined state; it must have been a magnificent structure in the days of its perfection, as the walls were lined with alabaster and covered with beautiful sculptures, all painted in colors that still remain. Some of the smaller rooms in the great temple were roofed with large stones placed on their edges, an arch was made in the stones, and then the whole of the cut surface was covered with hieroglyphics, which are as perfect as the day they were made. The sand that buried these temples for so many centuries was in one way their preserver. [Illustration: A LUNCH-PARTY OF OTHER DAYS.] "We took our lunch in the great hall of the temple, and it was an odd sight to see a group of Americans, English, and other modern people seated among the columns of this ancient edifice, engaged in picking the flesh from the bones of chickens, or devouring sandwiches, or slices of cold beef. Doctor Bronson leaned against one of the columns, and his hunger made him quite forget that his shoulders pressed upon the feet of a sculptured king, who had been patient and chickenless for many hundred years, and was totally unmoved by the incidents of modern days. Wonder if they had sandwiches and kindred things in the time of Sethi I., and is it possible that they used silver-plated knives and forks, or drank cold tea from glass tumblers? "Of the great city that once stood here nothing remains but heaps of rubbish, ruined temples and tombs, and a miserable village with a few dozen inhabitants, who live by what they can extort from visitors. "We returned to the steamer at Bellianeh by a road only half as long as that from Girgeh. The route was pretty much the same, as it lay through richly-tilled fields, and passed near several small villages of mud huts and muddy inhabitants. At Bellianeh there was the usual crowd of beggars, and we varied the monotony by throwing copper coins into heaps of dust, where the children scrambled for them. "Just by the stern of the boat there was a dust-heap about forty feet high, and very steep on the sides; one of the passengers threw a coin so that it struck about midway from top to bottom of the heap, and what a scramble there was for it! Those at the top rolled down, and those below climbed up. During the struggle they raised a perfect cloud, and several of them tumbled into the river. "Somebody got the money, and then they made signs for trying it again. Another copper was thrown, and then another, and the children evidently enjoyed the fun, and wanted it kept up as long as the boat remained.