AND LOWER EGYPT. I55 



to do away the absurd notions which those barba- 

 rians still persevered in with regard to travellers. 



Although the emir had offered me a lodging, I 

 preferred my own boat. The day after my visit I 

 saw, on my rising, three beautiful horses, which 

 were waiting on the banks of the Nile to conduct 

 me to the site of Tentyris^ which is little more than 

 a quarter of a league from the present village of 

 Dendera, towards the mountains of the west. I had 

 hardly arrived there when the prince himself ap. 

 peared ; he conducted me through every place, 

 pointing out to me those parts of the edifice which 

 travellers had delineated or measured, and the 

 spots which they had dug up. He proposed to 

 me to give orders for the ground to be dug up 

 wherever I desired ; but this labour, performed at 

 random and in haste, might have involved me in 

 some quarrel, without being of the slightest utility, 

 and I thanked the prince for his offers. He told 

 me, laughing, that the fellahs having imagined 

 that the Francs had discovered heaps of gold in 

 the ruins, had set themselves also to digging them 

 up, and found themselves hardly repaid for their 

 time and labour. 



Finally, this man, the most rational whom I met 

 with in Egypt, remounted his horse, after having 

 jointed out to me every thing that was most cu- 

 rious 



