the spot in which we could get the greatest amount of air.  A very soft and gentle breeze, wafted across the Desert from an unknown distance, fanned me as I slept.  The ascent was, I confess, a much more formidable undertaking than I had anticipated; and our French friend gave in after attempting a few steps.  The last words which had passed between him and me before we retired to rest, were interchanged as we were standing in front of the Sphinx, and were characteristic:  Ah! que c’est drole! was the reassuring exclamation which fell from his lips while we were there transfixed and awestruck.  As far as the ascent of the Pyramid was concerned, I am not sure but that I was sometimes tempted to follow his example, when I found how great was the effort required to mount up, in the hot air, the huge blocks of granite, and the unpleasantness of feeling every now and then with what facility one might topple downwards.  This sensation was most disagreeably felt when, as generally happened at any very critical place, my Arab friends, who were helping me up, began to talk of ‘backshish,’ and to insinuate that a small amount given at once, and before the ascent was completed, would be particularly acceptable.  However, after a while the summit was reached.  I am not sure that it repaid the trouble; at any rate, I do not think I should ever wish to make the ascent again.  We had a horizon all around tinted very much like Turner’s early pictures, and becoming brighter and more variegated as the dawn advanced, until it melted into day.  Behind, and on two sides of us, was the barren and treeless Desert, stretching out as far as the eye could reach.  Before us, the fertile valley of the Nile; the river meandering through it, and, in the distance, Cairo, with its mosques and minarets, the highest, the Citadel Mosque, standing out boldly upon the horizon.  It was a fine view, and had a character of its own, but still it was not in kind very different from other views which I have seen from elevated points in a flat country.  It does not stand forth among my recollections as a spectacle unique, and never to be forgotten, as that of the night before does.  Very soon after the sun rose the heat became painful on our elevated seat, and we hastened to descend-an operation somewhat difficult, but not so serious as the ascent had been.  We mounted our donkeys, and after paying a farewell visit to the Sphinx, we returned to Cairo as we had come, all agreeing that our expedition was one of the most agreeable and interesting we had ever made.  I confess that it was with something of fear and trembling that I returned to the Sphinx that morning.  I feared that the impressions which I had received the night before might be effaced by the light of day.  But it was not so.  The lines were fainter, and less deeply marked, but I found, or thought I found, the same meaning in them still.

[Sidenote:  Passengers homeward bound.]