orientalcairocit00sladuoft

334 Oriental Cairo
Shepherd. The powerful, unwieldy, and unreasonable buffalo
is, for some occult reason, usually in charge of a little child,
who has a taut string over his shoulder to lead the great
beast, or rides him barebacked without so much as a halter.
The woman seldom rides ; she is a beast of burden like the
camel and the donkey, and has her duties to perform ; she
will have something on her head— a few gallons of water, or
her kitchen utensils and some turkeys.
This is the procession of Mgypt, and it may always be seen
coming down to the landing at Bedrashen, where the very
houses are beasts of burden, with sheaves of green sugar-cane
leaning against their walls and battlements of dung on their
roofs.
If it be true that the Nile flood is gradually going to be
lost to sight in irrigation, instead of being spread out in fairy,
palm-bordered lakes, I am thankful that I did the ride from
Bedrashen to Memphis in the days of untutored inundation.
It was one of the most delightful rides I ever took, albeit
it was on a donkey hired for a shilling or so by Thomas
Cook & Son. We rode on soft sand or velvety vegetation,
through groves of palm-trees with vistas of lakes, till we came
to a little hill, where, under the finest palms of all, lay the
prostrate Rameses. " Please to notice her darling wife, Nefer-
tari,"said Mohammed the dragoman, pointing to a diminutive
figure clinging like a caterpillar to the leg of the great image.
This image, made of red granite, and a still larger one,
made of white limestone (which has a shed over it, and a
ladder to climb up its prostrate form), were discovered and
disinterred from the mud by British officers.
There is a delightful Arab village and cemetery on the top
of ancient Memphis, where I would gladly have lingered and
taken kodaks ;
but I refrained, since I knew that I had hardly
begun my sight-seeing, and for another hour rode along a high
causeway between the lakes of the inundation, looking across
the water at the lebbeks and sycamores which shaded the
summer wells, and, when we drew clear of the trees, at the
ancient Step-Pyramid of Sakkara, on the desert bluff above
the waters.