Who that has not wandered in such a valley as this to watch an Egyptian sunset can realise what death meant to the old Egyptians? They joined the barque of the sun and passed, like him, through the regions of the night: their death was like his setting. But it is only those who have seen the launching of that barque, as now we saw it, who can understand the meaning of those forgotten beliefs. In western cities the sunset is usually unobserved. The light of day fades in a slow process, and the moment when the sun sinks behind the horizon passes unnoticed. But Egypt is dominated by the sun, and the moment of its setting is the affair of every man. It is a pregnant event; and to us who now watched it here in the desert it was the occasion of the day. To us was made known at that hour much about ancient Egypt that can never be made known to the professor in his western study; and in this respect the merest tourist in the land is a better scholar than he. In Europe there is a comfortable melancholy in the sunset; but in Egypt there is a kind of foreboding also, an undefined feeling of anxiety which quite differentiates this time of day from the same hour in Europe. It is as though a man were abandoned to his own resources after being held in the protection of the light; and it is only when the full darkness has fallen, and the comforting night closes around him that the mind is at peace once more. Darkness falls rapidly in Egypt, and there was little light left by the time we reached the quarry. The hill of alabaster was outlined against the last-left glow of the western sky, but the valley in which we now stood was blurred and indistinct, and it was necessary to find quickly a sandy place amongst the boulders and gravel on which to lay our blankets. Such a spot was selected after a short search, and from it we scraped away all loose stones and pebbles, so that our rest should not be disturbed, in Nature’s bed, by a bad mattress. The camels were then given their evening meal, without water; and by starlight we fell upon our own frugal repast. That finished, there followed the happiest hour of these expeditions, when one reclines propped against a boulder and burns the evening sacrifice of tobacco to the gods of Contentment. The heat of the day had left the rocks by this time and the valley was fairly cool; and now a quiet breeze whispered amongst the boulders and sighed over the hills. Overhead the Milky Way spread like a rainbow from horizon to horizon; and as I dropped into dreams my thoughts were of the old Egyptians who believed that this was the Nile of the Heavens, along which the dead floated in their ghostly boats. It must have been pleasant actually to _see_ the place where one’s fathers now amused themselves: the next world must have been made a very great reality thereby. I was thinking how strange it would be at night to glance up at the sky and exclaim “There goes grandpapa!” when I fell asleep.