But, my dear father, Egypt is so familiar to you, that I will not weary you with any more descriptions, unless, indeed, I should visit the City of a Hundred Gates, as you were not able to go thither. I will speak, however, of a visit that I paid yesterday to the sphinx that stands before Chephres, and near Cheops. I was impressed, as you were, with the grandeur of the whole. But the great ancient temple, which you spoke of as ruinous, has, in forty-five years, become still more defaced. Indeed, the reigning Pharaoh has expressed his intention of removing it altogether, so that the pyramids may stand forth in solitary majesty. Among other events of the reign of Mœris, was the discovery, by him, that the tradition which represented the great sphinx as being hollowed into chambers was a true one. He found the entrance, which was beneath the small temple, between the fore-paws of the statue. What he discovered is known to no man; but it is certain that he suddenly displayed vast treasures of gold and silver, jewels and precious stones, with which he carried on his magnificent and expensive works. You have not forgotten the Ethiopian captive king, Occhoris. He still exists, though his beard is snow white and his form bent. He remains a captive, each monarch in succession retaining so important a personage in chains, annually to grace their processions to the temples of the gods. The condition, my dear father, of the Hebrew people, in whom you are so deeply interested, has enlisted all my sympathies also. Forty years have multiplied their number, notwithstanding all the ingenious efforts of the Pharaohs to destroy them by deadly labors, until they amount to three millions and a half of souls. The population of Egypt is only seven millions; and thus, for every two Egyptians there is one Hebrew. This alarming state of things fills the mind of Thothmeses IV. with ceaseless anxiety. He does not hesitate to confess to me, freely, his fears for the security of his crown.