Hundreds of little birds sing to us distractedly of the joy of life; the
sun shines radiantly, magnificently; the impetuous corn is already in
the ear; it might be some gay pageant of our days of May. One forgets
that it is February, that we are still in the winter--the luminous
winter of Egypt.

Here and there amongst the outspread fields are villages buried under
the thick foliage of trees--under acacias which, in the distance,
resemble ours at home; beyond indeed the mountain chain of Libya, like
a wall confining the fertile fields, looks strange perhaps in its
rose-colour, and too desolate; but, nevertheless amidst this glad music
of the fields, these songs of larks and twitterings of sparrows, you
scarcely realise that you are in a foreign land.

Abydos! What magic there is in the name! "Abydos is at hand, and in
another moment we shall be there." The mere words seem somehow to
transform the aspect of the homely green fields, and make this pastoral
region almost imposing. The buzzing of the flies increases in the
overheated air and the song of the birds subsides until at last it dies
away in the approach of noon.

We have been journeying a little more than an hour amongst the verdure
of the growing corn that lies upon the fields like a carpet, when
suddenly, beyond the little houses and tress of a village, quite a
different world is disclosed--the familiar world of glare and death
which presses so closely upon inhabited Egypt: the desert! The desert of
Libya, and now as ever when we come upon it suddenly from the banks
of the old river it rises up before us; beginning at once, without
transition, absolute and terrible, as soon as we leave the thick velvet
of the last field, the cool shade of the last acacia. Its sands seem to