252 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



sepulchres, transported our inscriptions, our very 

 gods, to heathen lands across the seas, robbed us 

 even of our noble dead ? " 



He paused for a moment, and the aged dignity 

 of his wrath left me without answer. I could 

 only gaze in fascinated fear at the son of Rameses. 

 He that proud Pharaoh who was the essential 

 factor for evil in the Book of Exodus. 



He raised a finger to the great Pyramid. 

 " Have you anything so great, so vast, so colossal 

 in your modern world as that? " he asked; and 

 there was danger lurking in the tone of his 

 interrogation. 



I thought for a moment of St. Paul's, but the 

 Colossus of Cheops is higher than the House of 

 God that Wren built. So I feebly gave expres- 

 sion to one of the enigmas of the centuries : 

 " How did you build them? " 



" By the shoulders and hands of slaves," he 

 answered, pardoning the sorriness of my reply. 



" We have no slaves in the world to-day," 

 I ventured. 



" No ? " the traveller from the age of world- 

 dawn remarked ; and there was a stinging scorn 

 in the softness of that " No." I gained a little 

 courage. 



" Slavery," I said, " is a stain of sin on the 

 raiment of our modern righteousness, and we 

 have washed it out. There are no more slaves." 



" You are a slave," said Meneptah, and there 

 was a world of disdain for the arrogance of my 

 modern pride in his voice. " You are all 

 slaves. Why do you work? Because you are 

 all serfs, because circumstance and the cruel 

 world are your masters, and they say to you, work 

 or you shall not eat bread, labour or you shall 

 not rest, toil or you must die. I have rested in 



