Not Seldom Even You May See One Of Them Making Her
Way Alone, Book In Hand, Towards One Of The Picturesque Rocks - No.
363, For Example, Or No.
364, if you like it better - which seems to be
making signs to her with its white ticket, in a manner which, to the
uninitiated observer, might seem even a little improper.
But what a sense of safety families may feel here, to be sure! In
spite of the huge numbers, which at first sight look a little
equivocal, nothing in the least degree reprehensible can happen among
these granites; which are, moreover, in a single piece, without the
least crack or hole into which the straggler could contrive to crawl.
No. The figures and the crosses denote simple blocks of stones,
covered with hieroglyphics, and correspond to a chaste catalogue where
each Pharaonic inscription may be found translated in the most
becoming language.
This ingenious ticketing of the stones of the desert is due to the
initiative of an English Egyptologist.
CHAPTER XX
THE PASSING OF PHILAE
Leaving Assouan - as soon as we have passed the last house - we come at
once upon the desert. And now the night is falling, a cold February
night, under a strange, copper-coloured sky.
Incontestably it is the desert, with its chaos of granite and sand,
its warm tones and reddish colour. But there are telegraph poles and
the lines of a railroad, which traverse it in company, and disappear
in the empty horizon.
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