1872 IN EGYPT 71 



Delta was its resemblance to Belgium and Lincoln- 

 shire. He has sections and descriptions of the 

 Mokatta hill, and the windmill mound, with a general 

 panorama of the surrounding country and an explana- 

 tion of it. He remarks at Memphis how the unburnt 

 brick of which the mounds are made up had in many 

 places become remanie into a stratified deposit dis- 

 tinguishable from Nile mud chiefly by the pottery 

 fragments and notes the bearing of this fact on the 

 Cairo mounds. It is the same on his trip up the 

 Nile ; he jots down the geology whenever opportunity 

 offered ; remarks, as indication of the former height 

 of the river, a high mud -bank beyond Edfou, and 

 near Assouan a pot-hole in the granite fifty feet 

 above the present level. Here is a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the tomb of Aahmes; there a river -scene 

 beside the pyramid of Meidum ; or vivid sketches of 

 vulture and jackal at a meal in the desert, the jackal 

 in possession of the carcass, the vulture impatiently 

 waiting his good pleasure for the last scraps ; of the 

 natives working at the endless shadoofs ; of a group 

 of listeners around a professional story-teller un- 

 finished, for he was observed sketching them. 



Egypt left a profound impression upon him. His 

 artistic delight in it apart, the antiquities and geology 

 of the country were a vivid illustration to his trained 

 eye of the history of man and the influence upon 

 him of the surrounding country, the link between 

 geography and history. 



He left behind him for a while a most unexpected 



