It was so warm that I let it remain, and lay
there hearing the gentle swish of the water curling against the side
of the steamer, and seeing the soft moonlight form a silver pathway
from the yellow bank across the river to my cabin door. The machinery
made no noise. There was no more vibration than on a sail-boat. And
there was the whole panorama of the Nile spread before my eyes, with
all its romance and all its mystery bathed in an enchanting radiance.
Occasionally a raven croaked. Sometimes a jackal howled. An obelisk
made an exclamation-point against the sky, or the ruins of a temple
fretted the horizon. It was the land of Ptolemy, of Rameses, of
Hathor, of Horus, of Isis and Osiris, of Herodotus and Cleopatra, of
Pharaoh's daughter and Moses. It was the silence of the ages which
fell upon me, and then and there, in that hour of absolute stillness
and solitude and beauty unspeakable, all my dreams of the Nile came
true.
XII
GREECE
After our ship left Smyrna, where the camels are the finest in the
world, and where the rugs set you crazy, we came across to the
Piraeus, and arrived so late that very few of the passengers dared to
land for fear the ship would sail without them.
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