us that outside there is a flaming, resplendent Eastern spring.

In this, the old grandfather, as it were, of churches, filled now with
a cloud of odorous smoke, what one hears, more even than the chanting
of the mass, is the ceaseless movement, the pious agitation of the
faithful; and more even than that, the startling noise that rises
from the holy crypt below--the sharp clashing of cymbals and those
multitudinous little wailings, that sound like the mewings of kittens.

But let me not harbour thoughts of irony! Surely not. If, in our Western
lands, certain ceremonies seem to me anti-Christian--as, for example,
one of those spectacular high masses in the over-pompous Cathedral of
Cologne, where halberdiers overawe the crowd--here, on the contrary,
the simplicity of this primitive cult is touching and respectable in the
extreme. These Copts who install themselves in their church, as round
their firesides, who make their home there and encumber the place with
their fretful little ones, have, in their own way, well understood the
word of Him who said: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and
do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God."

CHAPTER IX

THE RACE OF BRONZE

A monotonous chant on three notes, which must date from the first
Pharaohs, may still be heard in our days on the banks of the Nile,
from the Delta as far as Nubia. At different places along the river,
half-made men, with torsos of bronze and voices all alike, intone it
in the morning when they commence their endless labours and continue it
throughout the day, until the evening brings repose.

Whoever has journeyed in a dahabiya up the old river will remember this
song of the water-drawers, with its accompaniment, in slow cadence, of
creakings of wet wood.

It is the song of the "shaduf," and the "shaduf" is a primitive rigging,
which has remained unchanged since times beyond all reckoning. It
is composed of a long antenna, like the yard of a tartan, which is
supported in see-saw fashion on an upright beam, and carries at its
extremity a wooden bucket. A man, with movements of singular beauty,
works it while he sings, lowers the antenna, draws the water from the
river, and raises the filled bucket, which another man catches in its
ascent and empties into a basin made out of the mud of the river bank.
When the river is low there are three such basins, placed one above the
other, as if they were stages by which the precious wate