nd still--the human likeness magnified beyond all
measurement, and the three geometric mountains; things at first sight
like exhalations, visionary things, with nevertheless here and there,
and most of all in the features of the vast mute face, subtleties
of shadow which show that _it_ at least exists, rigid and immovable,
fashioned out of imperishable stone.

Even had we not known, we must soon have guessed, for these things are
unique in the world, and pictures of every age have made the knowledge
of them commonplace: the Sphinx and the Pyramids! But what is strange is
that they should be so disquieting. . . . And this pervading colour of
rose, whence comes it, seeing that usually the moon tints with blue the
things it illumines? One would not expect this colour either, which,
nevertheless, is that of all the sands and all the granites of Egypt and
Arabia. And then too, the eyes of the statue, how often have we not seen
them? And did we not know that they were capable only of their one fixed
stare? Why is it then that their motionless regard surprises and chills
us, even while we are obsessed by the smile of the sealed lips that seem
to hold back the answer to the supreme enigma? . . .

It is cold, but cold as in our country are the fine nights of January,
and a wintry mist rises low down in the little valleys of the sand. And
that again we were not expecting; beyond question the latest invaders of
this country, by changing the course of the old Nile, so as to water the
earth and make it more productive, have brought hither the humidity
of their own misty isle. And this strange cold, this mist, light as it
still is, seem to presage the end of ages, give an added remoteness
and finality to all this dead past, which lies here beneath us in
subterranean labyrinths haunted by a thousand mummies.

And the mist, which, as the night advances, thickens in the valleys,
hesitates to mount to the great daunting face of the Sphinx; and covers
it with the merest and most transparent gauze; and, like everything
else here to-night, this gauze, too, is rose-colored. And meanwhile the
Sphinx, which has seen the unrolling of all the history of the world,
attends impassively the change in Egypt's climate, plunged in profound
and mystic contemplation of the moon, its friend for the last 5000
years.

Here and there on the soft pathway of the sandhills are pigmy figures
of men that move about or sit squatting as if on the watch; and sma