The afternoon was drawing in when at last we floundered through a half-flooded field on to the sandy slopes of the desert at the foot of the hills. Here there is a vast cemetery, dating from the days of the last Pharaohs, when the people of Panopolis laid their bones at the edge of the wilderness, the Eastern Desert being dedicated to Pan-of-the-Goodly-Way, the Egyptian Min, as so many exvotos testify. The graves have all been dug out many years ago by robbers, and now the surface of the sand is littered with skulls and bones and portions of mummies. Dry, black faces grin at one, with set teeth and blind eyes, from the open tombs; and mummified hands and arms supplicate the passer-by from the sand. My horse put his hoof through the brain-pan of some old subject of Pharaoh; and, dismounting presently, I picked up the remains of a blue glazed drinking-vessel that had belonged to another. It is this plundering of ancient cemeteries that the Department of Antiquities has set itself to check; but here the Government was thirty or forty years late in taking the matter up, and the watchman who now parades the cemetery, gun in hand, has little left him to protect. These dead men’s bones lie before the entrance of the Wady Salamûni, as though protecting the sacred place from the curiosity of modern eyes. No tourists have found their way here, and indeed but few white men of any kind. Sohag, the capital of the province, is not a convenient or interesting town at which to stop; and to most persons it would seem unreasonable to suppose that anybody could wish to ride the long and tedious distance over the breadth of the Nile valley, and to penetrate amongst the forbidding hills of the desert, guarded by so many objectionable dead bodies. On the advice of my friend, the native Governor and his companions made the excursion; but though marquees were erected and refreshments were lavishly displayed therein, I do not think that he made any pretence of enjoying himself.