Only four men, however, in six years have slipped and fallen during this descent, and one of them had been drinking. They were all killed. The more you see of the pyramids the more you want to see of them, although I think one ascent is all perhaps you will care about taking; but their dignity and the wonder of their being where they are, and for so long, increases with every look at them. You cannot grow too familiar with the pyramids. They will not have it. [Illustration: DAHABEEYAHS ON THE NILE BEFORE CAIRO] On the road back from the Pyramids of Gizeh there are other pyramids within sight of Cairo, but these are those with which the Sphinx is associated. You will see here one of the most beautiful sights of Cairo, the dahabeeyahs on the Nile. They and their white sails, especially when they come wing and wing before the wind, are the most beautiful of floating objects, and when there are hundreds of them coming towards you in lessening perspective, with the sun shining on the sails, and the banks on either side alive and moving with the palms, the river Nile becomes the best part of Cairo. There is another place on the Nile which you should visit, and to which tourists seldom go. This is the isle of Rodda, on the bank of which Moses was found, and where you may see the Nilometer. This is a well about sixteen feet in diameter, connected by a channel with the Nile. It is made of masonry, and down one side there runs a column on which are inscribed ancient Arabian and Cufic numerals, or what answer for numerals. It was dug many centuries ago, and it marks the rising and falling of the river, and at the same time the prosperity or dismay of Egypt. When the tide begins to rise, this rude instrument is watched hourly, and the hopes of the people rise and fall as the muddy water moves up or down the narrow well. When it reaches a certain height the sheik in charge declares that the time has come for cutting the banks and irrigating the land. In ancient days the rate of taxation was determined by the height of the inundation, and it is said that the sheik in charge of the Nilometer is still under the influence of the government, to whose advantage it is to make the fellahin believe that the inundation is favorable. It was the engineers under Napoleon who discovered that the Nilometer was being tampered with, but there is no likelihood of its being abused to-day under the English, whose improvement of the irrigation of Egypt has been their best work, and for the fellahin's best good. But it is interesting, nevertheless, to look down into the old well, overgrown with vines and surrounded by ruin and crumbling walls and broken lattices, and to think that for centuries it brought news of famine or of plenty, and that it was, primitive as its construction is, the pulse of Egypt.