attentively. . . .  We pass mosques in total darkness and they too are silent and white, with a slight bluish tint cast on them by the moon.  And sometimes, between the houses, there are little enclosed spaces, like narrow gardens, but which can have no possible verdure.  And in these gardens numbers of little obelisks rise from the sand—­white obelisks, it is needless to say, for to-night we are in the kingdom of absolute whiteness.  What can they be, these strange little gardens? . . .  And the sand, meanwhile, which covers the streets with its thick coatings, continues to deaden the sound of our progress, out of compliment no doubt to all these watchful things that are so silent around us.

At the crossings and in the little squares the obelisks become more numerous, erected always at either end of a slab of stone that is about the length of a man.  Their little motionless groups, posted as if on the watch, seem so little real in their vague whiteness that we feel tempted to verify them by touching, and, verily, we should not be astonished if our hand passed through them as through a ghost.  Farther on there is a wide expanse without any houses at all, where these ubiquitous little obelisks abound in the sand like ears of corn in a field.  There is now no further room for illusion.  We are in a cemetery, and have been passing in the midst of houses of the dead, and mosques of the dead, in a town of the dead.

Once emerged from this cemetery, which in the end at least disclosed itself in its true character, we are involved again in the continuation of the mysterious town, which takes us back into its network.  Little houses follow one another as before, only now the little gardens are replaced by little burial enclosures.  And everything grows more and more indistinct, in the gentle light, which gradually grows less.  It is as if someone were putting frosted globes over the moon, so that soon, but for the transparency of this air of Egypt and the prevailing whiteness of things, there would be no light at all.  Once at a window the light of a lamp appears; it is the lantern of gravediggers.  Anon we hear the voices of men chanting a prayer; and the prayer is a prayer for the dead.

These tenantless houses were never built for dwellings.  They are simply places where men assemble on certain anniversaries, to pray for the dead.  Every Moslem family of any note has its little temple of this kind, near to the family graves.  And there are so many of them that now the place is become a town—­and a town in the desert—­that is to say, in a place useless for any other purpose; a secure place indeed, for we may be sure that the ground occupied by these poor tombs runs no risk of being coveted—­not even in the irreverent times of the future.  No, it is on the other side of Cairo—­on the other bank of the Nile, amongst the verdure of the palm-trees, that we must look for the suburb in course of transformation, with its villas of the invading foreigner, and the myriad electric lights along its motor roads.  On this side there is no such fear; the peace and desuetude are eternal; and the winding sheet of the Arabian sands is ready always for its burial office.