CHAPTER XXVII 



LAST YEARS 



1904^1905 



IT had been nearly twenty-three years since Mr. Shaler had had 

 other than the briefest vacations; he therefore resolved to 

 take a "sabbatical," and early in January, 1904, set sail on one 

 of the Mediterranean steamers for Egypt. He was very tired 

 and longed to rest his eyes upon new scenes in regions that he 

 knew only through his readings. He was not, as a rule, a good 

 sailor, but the seas were tranquil and he reached his destination 

 without much physical discomfort. Knowing as he did its geo- 

 logical and human history, he found every bit of land that he 

 passed in the Mediterranean mentally stimulating. The landing, 

 however, at Alexandria, that ancient seat of schools and philoso- 

 phies, was such as to banish all feeling of reverence. The scuffle 

 among dragomans and boatmen, the sort of Donnybrook Fair 

 at the station where belated luggage was weighed and mislaid, 

 the general demoralization of officials, a legacy doubtless of the 

 "unspeakable Turk's" misrule, filled him alternately with mirth 

 and indignation. Nor was he specially moved at Cairo. The 

 grandeur of the Pharaohs was veiled behind the veneer of 

 Western civilization. Even the sight of the Pyramids failed to 

 arouse any great emotion in him. Somehow he did not seem 

 able to get en rapport with these aged landmarks of vanished 

 aspirations. Indeed the antiquity of Egypt, which to most per- 

 sons is so overwhelming, to the naturalist, whose considerations 

 are based upon eons, from eternity onward to eternity, is 

 of no great moment ; a few dynasties more or less add little to 

 his conception of the element of time. 

 The whole life of the past as represented in the temples and 



