The water then is low and the valley parched.

Leaving the cosmopolitan town of modern Cairo, the iron bridges, and the pretentious hotels, with their flaunting inscriptions, it imparts a sense of sudden peacefulness to pass along the large and rapid waters of this river, between the curtains of palm-trees on the banks, borne by a dahabiya where one is master and, if one likes, may be alone.
At first, for a day or two, the great haunting triangles of the pyramids seem to follow you, those of Dashur and that of Sakkarah succeeding to those of Gizeh.

For a long time the horizon is disturbed by their gigantic silhouettes.

As we recede from them, and they disengage themselves better from neighbouring things, they seem, as happens in the case of mountains, to grow higher.

And when they have finally disappeared, we have still to ascend slowly and by stages some six hundred miles of river before we reach the first cataract.