The Town-The Mountain.-The Tombs-The Caravan Started-The Arabs-The Copts-Our First Camping Place.

IN the morning, for various reasons, among which sufficient rest was not one, we were all early astir. Before we were dressed and a partial wash attempted, Hassan came to tell us breakfast was ready. The announcement was received with some surprise : but incredulity gave way to pleasure as we found a table in another chamber loaded with the good things of Egypt-eggs, milk, coffee, and hot bread; to be supplemented presently by a great pot of "sherba" or soup, and a small pot of strong "chay" or tea.

While breakfast went on our plans for the day were settled. The first thing to do, said the Collector, was to get up the tent, the next, to get up the mountain. The site of our encampment must first be settled, and Hassan, the intelligent donkey "boy," or rather man, whom we have brought with us from Cairo, tells us he knows of a place which will be sure to please "my gentlemen," as, translating literally an Arab phrase, he calls us.

Once arrived on the camping ground the tent rises with amazing celerity. It is in the middle of a clover field between town and mountain, with a canal winding like a river round two sides, and on the other a long road, in part an embankment, in part an arched viaduct, which attested the engineering skill of the ancient Arabs who were established here before ever Cairo was built.

The face of the mountain, everywhere pitted with the tombs of the ancient Ssoot, the Greek Lycopolis, was very inviting from the tent door; and in the afternoon. we found ourselves on donkeys at its foot. The climb to the first tomb was soon accomplished, but not before we had been startled by the apparition of a gaunt grey wolf which, stalking out of a cavern, caught sight of us, and scampered off across the rocks with the rolling gallop of which Russian and American travellers have told us. A wolf at Lycopolis, though it is the "correct thing," is but seldom seen; and all over the mountain we found pitfalls,

mud huts, traps and snares, intended by the Arab hunters for the capture of the animal.

The tombs at Sioot have been often described, but not, I think, very accurately, except by Brugsch, in his Reiseberichte aus Aegypten.

The principal grotto is of enormous size. It commemorates a governor of Ssoot under the thirteenth dynasty whose name was Hap-Tefa. It must have been a magnificent excavation at one time. The colour is now all gone, and the arched roof, once blue, powdered with stars, is now almost black. The people call it "Stabl Antar," after a hero of Arab romance, who figures also in the name of a cave at the other side of the river. A second Hap-Tefa, who bears the sounding titles of "greatest among the great, wisest among the wise, pious and a benefactor, learned and a reader of rolls," is buried in the second great cavern a little higher up. He was also "nomarch" of Ssoot. In a third tomb, that of Tefab, son of Cheti, Brugsch found an inscription naming King Ra-ka-meri, who had commanded the deceased to rebuild the temple of Tap-heru, the wolf-headed god of Lycopolis, and setting forth that he accomplished his task to the satisfaction of the god; that under him Ssoot was prosperous; that there was neither strife, nor brawl, nor violence; that the child rested by its mother, and the poor man with his wife. This Ra-ka-meri, or Ka-meri-ra, has left no other trace of his existence than this inscription, made

probably by the deceased Tef-ab, the son of Cheti, in his own honour. M. Brugsch is inclined to identify him with Mer-ka-ra, the forty-fifth king, or else with a Ka....ra, whose name is partly effaced, and who was the eighty-second king of the thirteenth dynasty. There were some ninety kings or more, so great was the interval, the dark age, between the glories of the ancient monarchy and those of the middle period. But it was impossible to stay long underground on such a day. Even the Antiquary took more interest in the view of the town, the river, the green fields, and the vast shadow creeping slowly across the plain as the sun descended behind us.

Every effort had been made by Hassan and the cook for our reception on our return to the tent, but to their politely expressed disappointment and probably suppressed relief, the Collector had met an old school-fellow in the market-place and we had all promised to dine with him in his dahabeeah, which was moored near the railway station.

That night was our first in the tent. In spite of a somewhat uneven floor, and an insufficient supply of mats to cover the deep cracks in the rich black earth, we were extremely comfortable, and the voice of the experienced Collector would have little effect in rousing us at daybreak had he not added to his call for a basin of water, a command to our attendants to take down the tent.

Fortunately this was a work of some minutes, and

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we had time to enjoy the view. The Scot muttered disconnected lines from the 23rd Psalm, and the Irishman quoted Watts. There were pastures sweet, the quiet waters by, and fields beyond the swelling flood all dressed in living green. It was here, as the Collector reminded us, according to a Coptic legend, the Holy Family abode, during their exile in Egypt. Turning round we found a table prepared before us and the meal was increased by delicacies designed for the dinner of yesterday. The morning cold was intense, and though we sat at our table under the full rays of the rising sun, a heavy ulster or inverness, and a warm shawl over the tarboosh, were by no means enough.

A long discussion had been held the night before with the Sheykh of the donkey boys of Sioot. The gentleman who bore this proud title had brought with him, and presented to us, the chief donkey owner, and negotiations after an hour's bargaining were at length completed for the hire of eight donkeys to come with us to Luxor. A mule was at first proposed, or even a camel, for the tent, but two donkeys were held by the faculty to be preferable, and we had cause afterwards to be glad.

Breakfast was but half over as we saw our cavalcade descending from the town into the field. Eight donkeys, of all shapes and sizes and colours, were led, or rather chased, by Malek, Laessay, Mohammed,