A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

TEMPLE OF LUXOR. 143
phics around us;— there, a crouching woman
twitched our garments as her outstretched hand
spoke eloquently of her wants ;—and all fraterniz-
ing together in the greatest apparent harmony,
and enjoying the same degree of freedom, man
and brute alike, in the most wretched attempt
at human habitations which I ever yet beheld.
Such is the distracting picture that presents itself
in the interior of this once proud sanctuary of the
Pharaohs.
The gigantic colonnade which we had beheld
from the river consists in a double row of seven
columns each, eleven feet and a half in diameter,
covered with hieroglyphics and surmounted by
capitals representing the leafy summit of the
palm-tree. The quantity of sand and rubbish
which more than a thousand years of abandon-
ment has accumulated round the base of these
pillars, has raised the level of the soil to about
one half of their original height. This very much
detracts from the harmony of their appearance,
for they are now not sufficiently lofty for their
bulk ; but it is easy to imagine what must have
been the noble symmetry of those columns when,
free from the degrading encroachments which
time and neglect had gathered round them, they
stood proudly forth, unobstructed from base to