Some Are Comparatively Near; Others Almost
Lost In The Background Of The Solitudes - And Perhaps More Awesome In
That They Are Merely Outlined In Grey, High Up Among The Clouds.
*****
The little carriages that have brought us to the necropolis of
Memphis, through the interminable forest of palm-trees, had their
wheels fitted with large pattens for their journey over the sand.
Now, arrived at the foot of the fearsome region, we commence to climb
a hill where all at once the trot of our horses ceases to be heard;
the moving felting of the soil establishes a sudden silence around us,
as indeed is always the case when we reach these sands. It seems as if
it were a silence of respect which the desert itself imposes.
The valley of life sinks and fades behind us, until at last it
disappears, hidden by a line of sandhills - the first wave, as one
might say, of this waterless sea - and we are now mounted into the
kingdom of the dead, swept at this moment by a withering and almost
icy wind, which from below one would not have expected.
This desert of Memphis has not yet been profaned by hotels or motor
roads, such as we have seen in the "little desert" of the Sphinx -
whose three pyramids indeed we can discern at the extreme limit of the
view, prolonging almost to infinity for our eyes this domain of
mummies. There is nobody to be seen, nor any indication of the present
day, amongst these mournful undulations of yellow or pale grey sand,
in which we seem lost as in the swell of an ocean.
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