1?0 
whatever of his plans* He was very unwilling to let us have any 
specimens, and what we finally pried loose from him were ten jerboas, 
two hedgehogs, and two lizards (Dabs). The jerboas are cunning little 
mice, with long legs and pleasant yellow fur. We put the entire 
collection in the back of the car, pnd went on to the Mens House, 
fifteen minutes 1 drive from the Zoo, and on the edge of the Pyramids. 
I must say that Egypt * s famous monuments are more impressive 
seen from a distant. Looming up out of the desert sands, they are 
softened into romantic outlines ~ romantic, probably, because they 
are exactly like all the pictures one has ever seen of them, familiar 
• from childhood, and yet new when one sets eyes on them for the first 
time. When one ifi close to them, they are* huge and rather crumbly 
piles, great blocks of stone, and one is so forcibly reminded of the 
human sweat and agony that went into the making of them, that there 
seems little beauty in them. Our guide wanted me to ride a camel 
across the sand to see the Fphinx, but our time was so limited, and 
we were both feeling so feeble - Bill with his heat stroke and me 
with my rheumatics - that we weakly said T? No, the Sphinx must wait-, 
for our next visit. v Distant view of pyramid's at Saichara very lovely. 
?lhen Bill was here before, he had had with him for six months 
in the desert an Bedouin hunter named Abdul. For more than ten years 
I have been hearing tales of Abdul, and have always pictured him as 
a sort of rascally Arab guide. When Bill began making inquiries about 
him today, I thought it would be amusing to see him in the flesh. He 
used to live in a little village right at the foot of the pyramids. 
Bill asked en old guide at the Mena House if he knew him, and to his 
great delight found that Abdul Was now working for the Department of 
Agriculture, and we hastened to the Department to look for .Abdul. 
Alas, he had gone home for the day, but as his home was not far away 
we went there, and dr ve down a narrow, dusty street into a little 
village of flat-roofed, mud houses. Our guide went to look for 
Abdul, and presently a tall, finely built Egyptian, with erect and 
graceful bearing, came towards us down the little street. Bill was 
out of the car in a flash, and g ing over to the man gave him the /rab 
greeting that he had learned from his a quarter of a century ago. It 
was interesting to watch the two men f s faces - the Egyptian, dignified 
but puzzled, Bill eager, proud and happy. Then Bill said f, Don f t you 
remember Jebel-el-Sheik? T ' Pnd the da rk , aquiline face melted suddenly 
into the most winning of smiles. He put both arms aroun Bill, kissed 
him, and both of them were nearer tears than smiles for a moment. Even 
I choked up over the sentimentality of the reunion. Twenty-three years 
ago they had been practically blood brothers, had lived and fought and 
hunted together, and a three' minutes T visit was all they could have. 
Even then, Abdul had to tell me some of the tings that they had gone 
through together. He wanted us to come to his house for coffee, which 
I would have loved to have done, but our time was too short, and with 
affectionate farewells, we drove on. /bdul is a swell guy, and I 
would like to go on a shikari with him mj.%w±tx and Bill myself. 
Leaving Cairo, we went through the outskirts of the town, 
and through the ancient Heliopolis. Here is the obelisk, marking the 
center of the town, that Napoleon once took to Paris for the Place de 
la Concorde, and which the Egyptians now have back again. Farther on 
is the Virgin 1 s Tree, where Mary rested when she took the Child into 
Egypt. Reminders of Biblical days are on all sides of one. The 
native dress, the little villages of flat-roofed houses, the sheep 
and the camels and the donkeys, all fill out vividly one f s memory of 
