plethra; the orgya measuring six feet, or four cubits; the foot being four palms and the cubit six palms. The water in this lake does not spring from the soil, for these parts are excessively dry, but it is conveyed through a channel from the Nile, and for six months it flows into the lake and six months out again into the Nile. And during the six months that it flows out it yields a talent of silver every day to the king's treasury from the fish; but when the water is flowing into it, twenty minæ.

The people of the country told me that this lake discharges itself underground into the Syrtis of Libya, running westward towards the interior by the mountain above Memphis. But when I did not see anywhere a heap of soil from this excavation, for this was an object of curiosity to me, I inquired of the people, who lived nearest the lake, where the soil that had been dug out was to be found; they told me where it had been carried and easily persuaded me, because I had heard that a similar thing had been done at Nineveh, in Assyria. For certain thieves formed a design to carry away the treasures of Sardanapalus, King of Nineveh, which were very large, and preserved in subterraneous treasuries; the thieves, therefore, beginning from their own dwellings, dug underground by estimated measurement to the royal palace, and the soil, that was taken out of the excavations when night came on, they threw into the river Tigris, that flows by Nineveh; and so they proceeded until they had affected their purpose. The same method I heard was adopted in digging the lake in Egypt,

except that it was not done by night, but during the day; for the Egyptians who dug out the soil carried it to the Nile, and the river receiving it soon dispersed it. Now, this lake is said to have been excavated in this way.

FALLEN COLOSSUS OF RAMESES II.

GEORG EBERS

EMPHIS-the city of the living-is no more; but

MEM

the Necropolis of Memphis-the city of the deadhas been as wonderfully preserved as though it had some share in the immortality of the souls of its inhabitants that rest in Osiris. Here, if anywhere, is the spot for recalling the striking saying by which the Greeks were wont to express the character of the Egyptian temperament. "They regarded their house as an inn, and their grave as an eternal home; their life on earth as a brief sojourn and their death as true life." And their burial-places have, in fact, outlived their cities, and their tombs have perpetuated the memory of their life to our time.

There is no more venerable site of human culture than that we propose to visit to-day, and no more ancient monuments than those we shall find there.

We disembark at Bedrasheyn, a large fellah village. The palm-groves that surround it are among the finest in Egypt and how could they be other than flourishing? for they are rooted in a soil where stood for ages the most populous city in the world. It is delicious to ride on the dyke road that traverses these groves, for under the palm crowns it is never altogether sunny or shady, and the in