Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/98

80 with the complacent reflection that Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, brings wisdom to the old; and that it does not follow because Franks are so mad as to leave their own countries by thousands and tramp about foreign lands in droves of forty or fifty head, that they can be bled at any given moment by the exercise of sufficient importunity. Better for Ali to enjoy another hour's sleep in the shadow of the great Pylon, and fall upon his prey when they come forth exhausted by the perambulation of those acres of ruins, and confused to the last point of mental bewilderment by the explanations of their dragoman.

Not that these well-meant attempts of incomplete knowledge to enlighten complete ignorance through the medium of an imperfectly mastered language are necessary to the full obfuscation of the ordinary tourist. In any case, he is likely enough to emerge from the Temple of Karnak stupefied by that mere vastness of scale, those Titanic proportions of