Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/50

 26 Outlines of European History At this point we realize that we have followed early man out of the Stone Age (where we left him in Europe) into a civili- zation possessed of metal, writing, and government. We begin to see that dry and rainless Egypt furnishes the conditions for the preservation of such plentiful remains of early man as to make this valley an enormous storehouse of his ancient works and records. These are the only link connecting prehistoric man with the historic age of written documents, which we are now to study, as we make the voyage up the Nile and learn to read the monuments along the great river like a vast historical vol- ume, whose pages will tell us age after age the fascinating story of ancient man and all that he achieved here so many thousands of years ago. The wonderful achievements of the earliest Egyp- tians we have recalled as we journeyed across the Delta ; but now as the journey up the river proceeds we shall be able to watch the continuous progress of the Egyptian in the long centuries after his discovery of metals and writing. Such are the thoughts which occupy the mind of the well- informed traveler as his train carries him southward across the Delta. Perhaps he is pondering on the possible results which the Egyptians would achieve as he sees them in imagination throwing away their flint chisels and replacing them with those of copper. The train rounds a bend, and through an opening in the palms the traveler is fairly blinded by a burst of blazing sunshine from the western desert, in the midst of which he dis- covers a group of noble pyramids rising above the glare of the sands. It is his first glimpse of the great pyramids of Gizeh, and it tells him better than any printed page what the Egyptian builder with the copper chisel in his hand could do. A few minutes later his train is moving among the modem buildings of Cairo, and the very next day will surely find him taking the seven-mile drive from Cairo out to Gizeh.