AND LOWER EGYPT. 21 



rent. We stopped towards night, about eight 

 leagues distance from ancient Cairo, opposite to 

 Scheick Itmann, a little village of which the houses 

 or huts are of mud. Its appearance is not the less 

 pleasing. Groves of date-trees surround it ; their 

 verdant summits, which bear long and shooting 

 stalks, whilst others are bent downwards by the 

 winds, seem to cross each other in order to form a 

 shade to the roofs of the houses, enliven the gray 

 and obscure tints of the village, render it beauti- 

 fully picturesque, and form a most interesting 

 landscape. Several white herons came to pass the 

 night upon these date-trees, and composed there 

 a charming bouquet of a beautiful green and a 

 dazzling white. 



From ancient Cairo the eastern shore of the Nile 

 is bordered by that chain of mountains which begin 

 at Cairo itself. You see in them great cavities 

 formed by the extraction of the stones which have 

 been quarried there. The opposite side of that 

 mountain which overlooks the Nile, has been dug 

 up over almost all its surface. It is probable, that 

 from thence, in ancient times, those stones v/ere 

 extracted which they employed in the construction 

 of the city of Memphis, and of the pyramids. The 

 masses of which these last monuments have been 

 built, are absolutely of the same grain with the 

 calcareous rock of the mountain : and this circum- 



c 3 stance 



