The caravan started past Sakkara, following the same general character of road as the day before. To the left, lay the Nile, flowing between the cultivated fields, and beyond, the high, bare, rocky escarpment of the eastern plain; to the right, frowned the sandstone bluffs, from the top of which to the westward stretched the interminable leagues of desert. “That’s really the plan of all Egypt, isn’t it, Antoine?” asked Perry, at the evening halt, pointing across the cultivated stretch. “Desert on either side, and that two-mile strip between. I hadn’t ever thought of Egypt merely as a single narrow strip of land, at least, not as narrow as that.” “That is just what it is,” Antoine replied. “Except for the delta and Lower Egypt, for the Fayum, where we are going, and for the oases in the desert, that narrow valley is all. Yet Egypt has played a great part in the world.” “I don’t see that it does now,” declared Perry, with American opportunism. “It’s all tombs. We’ve seen the tombs of Ptah-hotep, Ti, Mera, and a whole lot of others to-day and yesterday. Those chaps seem to have done big things. They sent out armies all over the map. They built huge temples and pyramids. I don’t see that modern Egypt is doing anything at all. What’s the matter?” “Nations die out, like people,” said Antoine. “There is no longer any Egypt. It is England, and England only, that lives in the present, here. Yet, Perry, you must not forget that the great dam at Assouan, which was built less than ten years ago, is a much bigger work than the Pyramids and a million times more useful. Egypt now grows two crops instead of one, doubling the wealth of the entire country.” “Good,” said Perry emphatically; “that’s worth while. But, Antoine, why don’t the English modernize the entire business? Look at that chap over there, raising water with a shadouf. Instead of swinging that pole and that weight, just to bring up a small bucket full of water, he could put in a force-pump and get as much water in ten minutes as he can get now in half a day.” “Perhaps,” said his friend. “But what would he do the rest of the day? Sleep in the shade? To save his time would only increase his idleness.” “I don’t wonder that he sleeps,” said Perry, stretching himself. “I notice I want to sleep just as soon as the caravan stops.” “That’s the strong sunlight on your eyes,” declared Antoine. “You’d better turn in now.” “I guess I will,” the boy replied, and in a few minutes he had curled up on the rugs within his tent, looked up sleepily at the Arabic quotations from the Koran sewn in colored strips to the inside of the canvas walls, and, rightly judging these to be piously designed to bless his slumbers, he blinked twice and fell asleep.