Bending down, I beheld a cypress-tree springing from her heart.

It grew larger and larger, black and spreading, twined its roots around thy mother and strangled her.

A cold shiver seized me, and I was on the point of flying from the spot, when a fierce hurricane came from the East, struck the tree and overthrew it, so that its spreading branches were cast into the Nile.

Then the waters ceased to flow; they congealed, and, in place of the river, a gigantic mummy lay before me.

The towns on its banks dwindled into huge funereal urns, surrounding the vast corpse of the Nile as in a tomb.