And Then Too How Paradoxical And Ridiculous It
Seems To Be Travelling Here On Full Security And In A Carriage!
(The
most commonplace of hackney-carriages, which I hired by the hour on
the quay of Assouan.) A desert indeed which preserves still its
aspects of reality, but has become domesticated and tamed for the use
of the tourists and the ladies.
First, immense cemeteries surrounded by sand at the beginning of these
quasi-solitudes. Such old cemeteries of every epoch of history. The
thousand little cupolas of saints of Islam are crumbling side by side
with the Christian obelisks of the first centuries; and, underneath,
the Pharaonic hypogea. In the twilight, all these ruins of the dead,
all the scattered blocks of granite are mingled in mournful groupings,
outlined in fantastic silhouette against the pale copper of the sky;
broken arches, tilted domes, and rocks that rise up like tall
phantoms.
Farther on, when we have left behind this region of tombs, the
granites alone litter the expanse of sand, granites to which the usury
of centuries has given the form of huge round beasts. In places they
have been thrown one upon the other and make great heaps of monsters.
Elsewhere they lie alone among the sands, as if lost in the midst of
the infinitude of some dead sea-shore. The rails and the telegraph
poles have disappeared; by the magic of twilight everything is become
grand again, beneath one of those evening skies of Egypt which, in
winter, resemble cold cupolas of metal.
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