Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/72

 this last circumstance could be of no manner of utility! Perhaps, however, the whole secret lies in the using of serpents, or whatever other reptiles they profess to charm, for food; for by this practice they communicate to their perspiration, and, in fact, to their whole body, a snakish odour, which reconciles the reptiles to their touch, and causes them to regard their charmers and destroyers as genuine members of their body politic.

Hasselquist could not, of course, omit while at Cairo to visit the pyramids. The country about Gizeh, to which he proceeded by water, was so fertile and so admirably cultivated, that it was an object of perpetual admiration; and in winter the whole of this part of Egypt appears, when contemplated from an eminence, to be nothing but one vast sea of verdure, extending in every direction farther than the eye can reach. On arriving in the neighbourhood of the pyramids, he was hospitably entertained by an Arab sheikh, who was encamped there with his tribe. Two kids were slain, and reduced to an admirable pilau; and with a rough board for a table, a rush mat for a table-cloth, and their fingers for spoons, the whole party made a frugal but wholesome supper. It is necessary, says our traveller, that in such cases we should accommodate ourselves to the ways of the people, which if we do, there is no nation upon earth among whom we shall find so much friendship, frankness, and benevolence as the Arabs.

Having passed the night with these hospitable Bedouins, he pushed on to the pyramids over a plain covered with villages, and was soon standing in wonder and admiration at the base of the principal of these gigantic temples of Venus. When the effervescence of his astonishment had somewhat subsided, he entered with his Arab guides into the interior, which, no less than the external appearance, he found greatly to exceed the most exaggerated idea