t. Instead of it, you may catch distant
cries from the bank of the river, where the shadoof-man toils, lifting
ever the water and his voice, the one to earth, the other, it seems, to
sky; and the creaking lay of the water-wheel, which pervades Upper Egypt
like an atmosphere, and which, though perhaps at first it irritates, at
last seems to you the sound of the soul of the river, of the sunshine,
and the soil.

Much of the land looks painted. So flat is it, so young are the growing
crops, that they are like a coating of green paint spread over a mighty
canvas. But the doura rises higher than the heads of the naked children
who stand among it to watch you canter past. And in the far distance
you see dim groups of trees--sycamores and acacias, tamarisks and palms.
Beyond them is the very heart of this "land of sand and ruins and gold";
Medinet-Abu, the Ramesseum, Deir-el Medinet, Kurna, Deir-el-Bahari, the
tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens and of the princes. In the
strip of bare land at the foot of those hard, and yet poetic mountains,
have been dug up treasures the fame of which has gone to the ends of the
world. But this plain, where the fellaheen are stooping to the soil, and
the women are carrying the water-jars, and the children are playing in
the doura, and the oxen and the camels are working with ploughs that
look like relics of far-off days, is the possession of the two great
presiding beings whom you see from an enormous distance, the Colossi of
Memnon. Amenhotep III. put them where they are. So we are told. But in
this early morning it is not possible to think of them as being brought
to any place. Seated, the one beside the other, facing the Nile and the
home of the rising sun, their immense aspect of patience suggests will,
calmly, steadily exercised, suggests choice; that, for some reason, as
yet unknown, they chose to come to this plain, that they choose solemnly
to remain there, waiting, while the harvests grow and are gathered about
their feet, while the Nile rises and subsides, while the years and
the generations come, like the harvests, and are stored away in the
granaries of the past. Their calm broods over this plain, gives to it
a personal atmosphere which sets it quite apart from every other flat
space of the world. There is no place that I know on the earth which has
the peculiar, bright, ineffable calm of the plain of these Colossi. It
takes you into its breast, and you lie there in the gr