While this was going forward, and you felt as though you were assisting at a heathen rite in which self-punishment was being inflicted as a bid for God's indulgence, two interesting things happened. An officer in the English Army of Occupation turned to his dragoman and cried at the top of his voice, angrily: "Do you call this worth ten piasters? Well, I don't. Now if you've got anything to show me, take me to see it. This isn't worth coming to see. You're a rank impostor." [Illustration: A SECTION OF THE PYRAMID] The other thing was the act of a native woman, who brought her child to the door and handed it to a priest, who took it in his arms and passed with it in front of the swinging, gasping, crazy semicircle of men. The child was about three years old, and was dying, and the mother had brought it there to be cured by the breath of the dervishes. As it passed before them, the hair of some of the men swept its arm, and it turned its frightened eyes up to those of the priest, who smiled gravely down upon the baby and bore him outstretched in his arms three times in front of the swinging crescent. The faith of the child's mother appealed to some of us more than did the Englishman's desire to get his money's worth. The incident is only of interest here as showing perhaps why the Army of Occupation is not as popular as it might be. This officer was no doubt an excellent soldier--the ribbons on his tunic showed that--and no one would have thought of questioning his ability to handle raw recruits or his knowledge of tactics. But in handling the Egyptian tactics do not count for so much as tact. There are several ways of reaching the pyramids, and it is eminently in keeping with the other incongruities of the place and time that the most popular way of visiting them is on a four-in-hand coach, with a guard in a red coat and a bell-shaped white beaver tooting on his horn, and a young gentleman with a boutonniere and an unhappy smile holding the reins and working his way in and out between long strings of camels. There is a very smart hotel about two hundred yards from the foot of the pyramids, and you take a donkey there or a camel and ride up a sandy road to the base of the Pyramid of Cheops. There are then several things that you may do. You can either climb to the top of this first pyramid, or crawl into its interior, or walk over to see the Sphinx, or make a tour of subterranean tombs and passageways of alabaster and polished stones, which are lighted for you by magnesium wire or stumps of candles.