Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/60

42 on the banks of the Nile?" Dost thou, the symbol of British conquest in thy military attire, symbolise also in the swiftness of thy transit its brief duration? Four of the world's conquerors have already swept over this hoary land and are gone. Persian and Macedonian, and Roman and Arab—they have all passed, like the bird or the arrow of Ecclesiastes, behind whose flight the air closes, so that no man can tell of its passage. Their records remain, as all things remain in this country of the imperishable; but the traces of their power in anything more human or vital than graven granite or moulded clay might be sought in vain. The conquests which create peoples, the wars which sow the seeds of States are here unknown. Master after master of Egypt has come as a conqueror; and as conquerors always, and as nation-builders never, the dynasties founded by them have ruled and have disappeared, the fruits of their victories perishing with them, and the mere tradition