For At Last I Saw The Sands That I Love
Creeping Down To The Banks Of The Nile.
And they brought with them
that wonderful air which belongs only to them - the air that dwells
among the
Dunes in the solitary places, that is like the cool touch of
Liberty upon the face of a man, that makes the brown child of the
nomad as lithe, tireless, and fierce-spirited as a young panther, and
sets flame in the eyes of the Arab horse, and gives speed of the wind
to the Sloughi. The true lover of the desert can never rid his soul of
its passion for the sands, and now my heart leaped as I stole into
their pure embraces, as I saw to right and left amber curves and
sheeny recesses, shining ridges and bloomy clefts. The clean delicacy
of those sands that, in long and glowing hills, stretched out from
Nubia to meet me, who could ever describe them? Who could ever
describe their soft and enticing shapes, their exquisite gradations of
color, the little shadows in their hollows, the fiery beauty of their
crests, the patterns the cool winds make upon them? It is an enchanted
/royaume/ of the sands through which one approaches Isis.
Isis and engineers! We English people have effected that curious
introduction, and we greatly pride ourselves upon it. We have
presented Sir William Garstin, and Mr. John Blue, and Mr. Fitz
Maurice, and other clever, hard-working men to the fabled Lady of
Philae, and they have given her a gift:
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