grey sands, sulphur color in the afternoon from very near at hand, black
as a monument draped in funereal velvet for a mourning under the stars
at night, white as a monstrous marble tomb soon after dawn from the
sand-dunes between it and Sakkara. But as a golden thing it greeted me,
as a golden miracle I shall remember it.

Slowly the sun went down. The second Pyramid seemed also made of gold.
Drowsily splendid it and its greater brother looked set on the golden
sands beneath the golden sky. And now the gold came traveling down from
the desert to the water, turning it surely to a wine like the wine of
gold that flowed down Midas's throat; then, as the magic grew, to a
Pactolus, and at last to a great surface that resembled golden ice,
hard, glittering, unbroken by any ruffling wave. The islands rising from
this golden ice were jet black, the houses black, the palms and their
shadows that fell upon the marvel black. Black were the birds that flew
low from roof to roof, black the wading camels, black the meeting leaves
of the tall lebbek-trees that formed a tunnel from where I stood to Mena
House. And presently a huge black Pyramid lay supine on the gold, and
near it a shadowy brother seemed more humble than it, but scarcely less
mysterious. The gold deepened, glowed more fiercely. In the sky above
the Pyramids hung tiny cloud wreaths of rose red, delicate and airy as
the gossamers of Tunis. As I turned, far off in Cairo I saw the first
lights glittering across the fields of doura, silvery white, like
diamonds. But the silver did not call me. My imagination was held
captive by the gold. I was summoned by the gold, and I went on, under
the black lebbek-trees, on Ismail's road, toward it. And I dwelt in it
many days.

The wonders of Egypt man has made seem to increase in stature before the
spirits' eyes as man learns to know them better, to tower up ever higher