<A JOURNEY IN THE EAST: 243 



Egyptian cultivation high farming, pent within narrow 

 bounds. True fellaheen villages alternated with palm-groves 

 larger than those of Lower Egypt, and our attention was 

 attracted by whole towns of round dovecotes built in real 

 Arab style. Thousands of Rock-Doves here find shelter and 

 protection simply for the sake of their valuable guano, their 

 eggs and down being also occasionally taken. These birds 

 never become quite domesticated, but are semi-wild in their 

 habits, and in size and colour remain true Rock-Doves. 



The rail runs on the left side of the Nile, often close to the 

 bank. To the east one sees the desert mountains approaching 

 the river, and to the west the undulating, almost flat, Libyan 

 desert : it also passes all the Pyramids, quite near enough to 

 admit of their being well seen. First come the hoary piles of 

 Gizeh, the proudest of their race ; and these are soon followed 

 by their smaller relatives of Sakkara, while the extensive 

 palm-forests of Bedrascheen and Memphis heighten the tho- 

 roughly African character of the landscape. We Europeans 

 are accustomed to look with wonder at solitary palms in hot- 

 houses or on the southern coasts of our ill-dowered quarter of 

 the globe ; but only in the great rustling palm-forests is this 

 tree invested with its full force as the symbol of glowing 

 Africa. 



About 10 A.M. we branched off from the main line which 

 follows the Nile to Siut, turning due west into the lonely 

 barren waste; and strange and wonderful it seemed to be 

 travelling by rail through these grandly desolate regions. 



At a single stride one steps beyond the limit of the Nile 

 inundations, and passes from a vegetation blessed with moisture, 

 and teeming with a luxuriance such as the Dark Continent 

 alone can generate, into the death-like stillness of the lifeless 

 waste. 



Any one who imagines the desert to be flat and quite level, 

 like many of the Hungarian " pusztas " or the marshy land in 



B2 



