Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/142

124 as in the granite sanctuary just over the river at Karnak. It is possible that when your extensive broken and sloping surface—I speak, of course, of your condition previous to your injudicious restoration by Severus—was 'exposed to the direct rays of the rising sun while wet with the dews of early morning, a current of air might have been set up by this sudden change of temperature, and, passing over your rough and pebbly surface, might have produced the famous music. In that case the phenomenon would naturally cease when the upper part of the figure was replaced.

Shama recited this instructive passage with considerable fluency. Fragments of it had, in fact, been wafted up to him on many different occasions from the groups of sightseers round his base, and he had once heard it read out in extenso—and a loud voice—by a tourist who had mistaken him for the vocal Colossus, and under that delusion had clambered up into his lap.