As we rode over the broad expanse of the desert, the hills ahead formed themselves into groups of islands rising from the wide waters of the mirage. The pathway before us melted into the great lake which stretched out to the horizon, studded with these phantom islands always changing shape as our viewpoint was altered. It was not until we had ridden for some time, and the afternoon sun was passing down towards the hills behind us, that the mirage disappeared and the rolling desert ahead became entirely clear. Presently the pathway developed into a road of some breadth which had evidently been made for the purpose of the transport of the blocks of alabaster from the quarry to which we were heading our way. The loose stones had been cleared to either side, and the sudden dips had been filled in. This road wound away before us, lost here and there as it descended into an old watercourse, and appearing once more as it climbed an incline on the further side. It was a long and rather tedious business to set this twisting length of road behind us, but at last, as the sun set, we reached the mouth of a rocky gauge on our left, and riding along it for a short distance, came in sight of our destination. As we rode between the narrowing rocks the sun set, and we walked our camels slowly that we might the better appreciate the recurrent tragedy of the day and might watch the sky in all the pity of its glory. Before us there clustered the alabaster rocks, and through a break in the wall of the hills the whole expanse of the sunset could be seen. There were some undefined clouds gathered high over the horizon, and these took the last glances of the departed sun and displayed them against the darkening sky. Overhead three crows, black against the heavens, flew home to their nests; and presently a flight of cranes, but now returned from Europe, passed from the north towards the river, and faded into the red dusk of the south, cleaving a path for the thoughts into the heart of the haze. In Egypt the death of the day is a sad business. The red despair of the sky, the untold sorrow of the hills, spreads a tone of melancholy over the mind; and here in this silent valley one’s thoughts went away, sober, and even mystical, into the haze, and there was no more whistling of comic songs for awhile. What man living in sedate Europe, even if he can understand the pathos of sunset, can feel the old peril of nightfall? I sometimes wonder how the Egyptologist in his museum at home can hope, for example, to appreciate the words of the “heretic” Pharaoh’s Hymn to the Sun: “By thee men live, and their eyes look upon thy beauty, But when thou settest they die.”