The interest to the tourist centred equally in the excursions. It was but a few miles to Matarea—to use the Italian spelling, preferable with many of the names that occur, especially in this chapter, as a sign of the times—and no Roman Catholic omitted it, seeing that there stood the house where Our Lady dwelt for some years after her flight from Palestine; at Cairo itself was preserved some of the water in which she washed her baby-clothes. Neither, naturally, was any one inclined to pass on without a visit to the Pyramids; no doubt Della Valle's name is still to be found cut on the top of the Great Pyramid on the facet that looks towards Italy. He entered the Great Pyramid, the only one into which entrance was effected at this date; but had no opportunity of saying anything regarding it out of the ordinary; it is when he moved on to what were known as the "Pyramids of the Mummies" that his account of his doings again becomes one of the most remarkable, as well as one of the best written, of research in Egypt. He made a halt at "Abusir," and then after entering one of these minor Pyramids, moved on to "Saccara," the centre for mummy-hunting, which formed the occupation of the boys of the village. On Della Valle's arrival they had a stand-up fight for the privilege of taking him home, and the next morning about fifty were at his door. A procession having been formed, all were set to work in different places probing for tombs, for Della Valle was bent on examining such as had never been opened hitherto. His trouble and expense were well rewarded, for the two mummies he brought away intact were pronounced at Cairo to be the most remarkable that any one there remembered seeing. They cost him three piastri—less than five pounds in our money at present values—each, and are now in Dresden Museum. It was rare for any to be seen intact, for hunting for mummies was not carried on for museums, but because of their supposed medicinal value, greatest, it was thought, in virgin-mummies; one of the rare qualities of Othello's handkerchief consisted in its having been ... dyed in mummy which the skilful Conserved of maiden's hearts ... Mummies were therefore broken up as soon as found, and sold piecemeal; sometimes also to painters, who by means of them obtained certain shades of brown otherwise unattainable. There was, nevertheless, an Englishman, named John Sanderson, who brought one away intact, besides six hundred pounds of fragments to sell to London apothecaries, in spite of mummy being contraband export from Egypt. [Illustration: AT MOUNT SINAI]