434 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES -IV 



for our companions, some fourteen Americans and Eng 

 lishall on friendly terms. Every day came new sub 

 jects of thought, and nearly every waking moment came 

 some new stimulus to observation and reflection. 



Deeply impressed on my mind is the account given me 

 by Brugsch Bey, assistant director of the Egyptian Mu 

 seum, of the amazing find of antiquities two or three 

 years before perhaps the most startling discovery ever 

 made in archaeology. It was on this wise. The museum 

 authorities had for some time noted that tourists com 

 ing down the river were bringing remarkably beautiful 

 specimens of ancient workmanship ; and this led to a sus 

 picion that the Arabs about the first cataract had dis 

 covered a new tomb. For a long time nothing definite 

 could be found; but, at last, vigorous measures having 

 been taken, measures which Brugsch Bey did not ex 

 plain, but which I could easily understand to be the time- 

 honored method of tying up the principal functionaries 

 of the region to their palm-trees and whipping them until 

 they confessed, the discovery was revealed, and Brugsch 

 Bey, having gone up the Nile to the place indicated, was 

 taken to what appeared to be a well; and, having been 

 let down into it by ropes, found himself in a sort of ar 

 tificial cavern, not beautified and adorned like the royal 

 tombs of that region, but roughly hewn in the rock. It 

 Was filled with sarcophagi, and at first sight of them he 

 Was almost paralyzed. For they bore the names of sev 

 eral among the most eminent early sovereigns and mem 

 bers of sovereign families of the greatest days of Egypt. 

 The first idea which took hold of Brugsch s mind while 

 stunned by this revelation was that he was dreaming; 

 but, having soon convinced himself that he was awake, 

 he then thought that he must be in some state of hallu 

 cination after death that he had suddenly lost his life, 

 and that his soul was wandering amid shadows. But 

 this, too, he soon found unlikely. Then came over him 

 a sense of the reality and importance of the discovery 

 too oppressive to be borne. He could stay in the cavern 



