. . .
It Is Cold, But Cold As In Our Country Are The Fine Nights Of January,
And A Wintry Mist Rises
Low down in the little valleys of the sand.
And that again we were not expecting; beyond question the latest
Invaders of this country, by changing the course of the old Nile, so
as to water the earth and make it more productive, have brought hither
the humidity of their own misty isle. And this strange cold, this
mist, light as it still is, seem to presage the end of ages, give an
added remoteness and finality to all this dead past, which lies here
beneath us in subterranean labyrinths haunted by a thousand mummies.
And the mist, which, as the night advances, thickens in the valleys,
hesitates to mount to the great daunting face of the Sphinx; and
covers it with the merest and most transparent gauze; and, like
everything else here to-night, this gauze, too, is rose-colored. And
meanwhile the Sphinx, which has seen the unrolling of all the history
of the world, attends impassively the change in Egypt's climate,
plunged in profound and mystic contemplation of the moon, its friend
for the last 5000 years.
Here and there on the soft pathway of the sandhills are pigmy figures
of men that move about or sit squatting as if on the watch; and small
as they are, low down in the hollows and far away, this wonderful
silver moon reveals even their slightest gestures; for their white
robes and black cloaks stand sharply out against the monotonous rose
of the desert.
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