The donkeys were waiting on the other bank--the same we had used yesterday, fat and fresh as ever, and the same boys were there calling and gesticulating to their special charges of the day before. There are always a few more donkey-boys than is necessary, it seems, all of them wildly eager for the privilege of racing all day in the perishing sun, urging the donkeys and yelling for baksheesh at every jump--not that they expect to get it until the end of the day, but as a traditional part of the performance. The donkey-boy gets nothing, we are told, but what one is pleased to give him--the donkey hire going to the Sheik, who owns the donkeys and lets the boys get what they can. I would write a good deal about those half-naked, half-savage, tireless donkey-boys if permitted. They and their brothers, and their cousins even to the fourth remove, who come in like a charging army in the wild baksheesh skirmish at the end, interest me. Mounted, we led away in the usual stampede along canals and by lush green fields, across the fertile strip that borders the Nile. The green is rather wide here--as much as a mile, I should think, and it was pleasant going through the still morning if one kept well forward in the procession--in front of the dust that rose mightily behind us. Every little way where we slackened speed, detachments of sellers would charge from the roadside with trinkets, imitation scarabs, and images, but more notably with fragments (and these were genuine enough) of what long ago--as much as three or four thousand years, perhaps--had been human beings like ourselves. Remnants of mummies they were, quarried out of the barren hills where lie not only the kings but the millions who in the glory of Egypt lived and died in Thebes. The hills are full of them, Gaddis said, and unearthing them has become an industry. It was rather grewsome at first to be offered such things--to have a head, or a hand, or a foot thrust up under your eyes, and with it an outstretched palm for payment. The prices demanded were not very high, and the owners, the present owners, would take less--a good deal less than the first quotation. A physician in our party bought a head--hard and black as old mahogany, with some bits of gold-leaf still sticking to it--for five francs, and I was offered a baby's hand (it had been soft and dimpled once--it was dark and withered now) for a shilling. We crossed the line which "divides the desert from the sown"--a sharp, perfectly distinguishable line in Egypt--and were in the sand, the sun getting high and blazing down, fairly drenching us with its flame. We thought it would be better when we entered the hills, but that was a mistake. It was worse, for there was not a particle of growing shade, not a blade of any green thing, and there seemed no breath of life in that stirless air.