gaze was directed over a large area of
mud-pie, knee-deep in which a few bedraggled natives slushed their way
downwards. After three weeks' work on this distressing site, the
professor announced that he had managed to trace through the mud the
outline of the palace walls, once the feature of the city, and that the
work here might now be regarded as finished. He was then conducted to a
desolate spot in the desert, and until the day on which he fled back to
England he was kept to the monotonous task of superintending a gang of
natives whose sole business it was to dig a very large hole in the sand,
day after day and week after week.

It is, however, sometimes the fortune of the excavator to make a
discovery which almost rivals in dramatic interest the tales of his
youth. Such as experience fell to the lot of Emil Brugsch Pasha when he
was lowered into an ancient tomb and found himself face to face with a
score of the Pharaohs of Egypt, each lying in his coffin; or again, when
Monsieur de Morgan discovered the great mass of royal jewels in one of
the pyramids at Dachour. But such "finds" can be counted on the fingers,
and more often an excavation is a fruitless drudgery. Moreover, the
life of the digger is not often a pleasant one.

[Illustration: PL. XVI. The excavations on the site of the city
of Abydos.]

[_Photo by the Author._

It will perhaps be of interest to the reader of romances to illustrate
the above remarks by the narration of some of my own experiences; but
there are only a few interesting and unusual episodes in which I have
had the peculiarly good fortune to be an actor. There will probably be
some drama to be felt in the account of the more important discoveries
(for there certainly is to the antiquarian himself); but it should be
pointed out that the interest of these rare finds pales before the
description, which many of us have heard, of how the archaeologists of a
past century discovered the body of Charlemagne clad in his royal robes
and seated upon his throne,--which, by the way, is quite untrue. In
spite of all that is said to the contrary, truth is seldom stranger than
fiction; and the reader who desires to be told of the discovery of
buried cities whose streets are paved with gold should take warning in
time and return at once to his novels.

If the dawning interest of the reader has now been thoroughly cooled by
these words, it may be pres