"It may be that the traveler who finds himself for the first time in the midst of a grove of _Wellingtonia gigantea_ feels something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and wonder; but the great trees, though they have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery that comes of human labor. They do not strike their roots through six thousand years of history. They have not been watered with the blood and tears of millions. Their leaves know no sounds less musical than the singing of the birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the highlands of Calaveras. But every breath that wanders down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under the chariot-wheels of the conqueror." MEMPHIS. "And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities--a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the Memphis that King Mena[1] came from Thinis to found--the Memphis of Chufu[2] and Chafra,[3] and all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus and Strabo? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at half a day's journey in every direction? One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood--here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Gizeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. [1] Menes. [2] Khufu. [3] Khafre. "No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persians, the Greek and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry from which old Cairo was built; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and decay....