XLVII.

SUNSET.

"Tired with the pomp of their Osirean feast."

"WITH all Egypt behind you,"—so donkeyed the Howadji from the Sphinx and the silence of the desert. They reached the shore and stepped upon the boat while the sun was wreaking all his glory upon the west. It burned through the trees and over the little town of Ghizeh, and its people and filth, and as we moved into the stream, the pyramids occupied the west, unhurt for that seeing, large and eternal as ever, with the old mystery— the old charm.

The river was full of boats, in the vicinity of the city. The wind blew gently from the north, and fleets of sails were stretching whitely southward. Even some Howadji were just dotting down their first Nile notes, and we, mariners of two months, felt old and mature as we watched them. Had we not worshipped at Aboo Simbel and conquered the

cataract, and heard Memnon, and stood on Memphis?

Back in that sunset came thronging the fairest images of the Nile; and may sweet Athor, lovely lady of the West, enable you, retiring reader, to stand looking backward over these pages, and behold a palm-tree, or a rosy pyramid, or Memnon, or a gleam of sunshine brighter than our American wont, or the graceful Ghawazee beauty that the voyager so pleasantly remembers.

-And you, Italian Nera, who ask if the sherbet of roses was indeed poured in a fountained kiosk of Damascus, you know that Hafiz long since sang to us, how sad were the sunset, were we not sure of a