overflowing bucket, stream constantly with cold water; and sometimes the
wind is icy, even while the sun burns; but these perpetual workers are,
as we have said, of bronze, and their hardened bodies take no harm.

These men are the fellahs, the peasants of the valley of the Nile--pure
Egyptians, whose type has not changed in the course of centuries. In the
oldest of the bas-reliefs of Thebes or Memphis you may see many such,
with the same noble profile and thickish lips, the same elongated eyes
shadowed by heavy eyelids, the same slender figure, surmounted by broad
shoulders.

The women who from time to time descend to the river, to draw water
also, but in their case in the vases of potters' clay which they
carry--this fetching and carrying of the life-giving water is the one
primordial occupation in this Egypt, which has no rain, nor any living
spring, and subsists only by its river--these women walk and posture
with an inimitable grace, draped in black veils, which even the poorest
allow to trail behind them, like the train of a court dress. In this
bright land, with its rose-coloured distances, it is strange to see
them, all so sombrely clothed, spots of mourning, as it were, in the
gay fields and the flaring desert. Machine-like creatures, all untaught,
they yet possess by instinct, as did once the daughters of Hellas, a
sense of nobility in attitude and carriage. None of the women of Europe
could wear these coarse black stuffs with such a majestic harmony, and
none surely could so raise their bare arms to place on their heads the
heavy jars filled with Nile water, and then, departing, carry themselves
so proudly, so upright and resilient under their burden.

The muslin tunics which they wear are invariably black like the veils,
set off perhaps with some red embroidery or silver spangles. They are