Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/304

1030 comparatively light work, I had more boys than men diggers, the former being not only easier to manage and more trustworthy, but quite as keen about the work as the men, which is rather remarkable, seeing that all their earnings go to their parents. But I should think nearly every boy in the district who could walk wanted to be taken on to the work. Some of the tiny applicants really looked as though they had only recently left their cradles, if they had ever known such luxuries, which, of course, they had not. One of the smartest workers of all was also the smallest, a little chap about eight years old, who had a wonderful eye for the right kind of soil for finding papyri. I am afraid some tender-hearted persons would have thought me a very brutal task-master, if they could have seen some of these children lifting and carrying away heavy baskets of rubbish all day, clothed, perhaps, if the weather was hot, in nothing but a cap on their heads and a piece of string round their waists. But I think the same persons would have retracted their opinion, if they could, at the end of the day's work, have seen the said infants racing each other home over the sand dunes, while I plowed my way painfully in the rear.

People naturally think of excavating as a continuous process of looking on at the discovery of valuable things; but there is, of course, another side to it, which is, in reality, much the more prominent of the two. There are many more blanks than prizes drawn in this, perhaps the most legitimate, form of lottery, though the world does not hear much of the first. And even when Fortune is, on the whole, kind, she generally bestows her gifts at rare intervals, in the hope of which the excavator has to bear weeks and often months of monotony. Moreover, superintending excavations in Egypt means standing all day to be half choked and blinded by the peculiarly pungent dust of ancient rubbish, blended on most days with the not less irritating sand of the desert; probably drinking water which not even the East London Waterworks would have ventured to supply to its consumers, and keeping incessant watch over men who, however much you may flatter yourself to the contrary, will steal if they get the chance and think it worth their while to do so.

Still the excavator's life has a fascination possessed by few other pursuits; and though at present the task of publishing the papyri which we have found is more pressing than that of discovering new ones, I look forward to the day, not very distant, I hope, when I shall once more exchange the pen for the measuring stick, and the close atmosphere of the study for the freedom and independence of the desert.