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Show Egypt Ami impression i i r"0; . f - 1 v , o H v.Vritf IB! " l--fi.i,'.,; '.. lit . t . 4 ',.. t. . - V.-V-''' -SI J ii . -Zf v ' ' ' I A, I ! t . :-.V-x-:'v. :-.-:0' v;.:. :-.i"'-''':-.-.v THE SHEIKH'S TOMB A CONSIDERABLE amount of nonsense has been written about the spell of Egypt. Cheapened by exaggeration, vulgarized by familiarity, it lias lie-come lie-come for many a picture post card spell, pinned against tbe mind like the posters at a railway te;rninu.s. The moment Alexandria is reached, this huge post card hangs across the heavens, blazing in an over-colored sunset, composed theatrically of temple, tem-ple, pyramid, palm trees by the shining shin-ing Nile, and the inevitable Sphinx. An.!, the monstrosity of it paralyzes the mind. Its strident shout deafens the Imagination. Memory escapes with difficulty from the insistent, gross advertisement. ad-vertisement. The post card and the poster smother sight, writes Algernon Blackwood, in Country Life. Behind this glare and glitter there hides, however, another delicate yet potent tiling that is somehow nameless -not acknowledged by all, perhaps because be-cause so curiously elusive yet surely felt by all because It is so true ; intensely in-tensely vital, certainly, since it thus survives the suffocation of its vile ex-mggregation. ex-mggregation. For the ordinary tourist yields to it, and not illone fie excavator exca-vator and archeologlst ; the latter, indeed, in-deed, who live long in the country, cease to be aware of it as an outside Influence, having changed insensibly in thought and feeling till they have become be-come it ; it is in their blood. An effect ef-fect is wrought subtly upon the mind that does not pass away. Having once "gone clown into Egypt," you are never quite the same again. Certain values have curiously changed, perspective per-spective has altered, emotions have shifted their specific gravity, some attitude at-titude to life, in a wrt'd, been emphasized, empha-sized, and another, as it were, obliterated. oblit-erated. The spell works underground, and, being not properly comprehensible, comprehensi-ble, is nameless. Moreover, it is the casual visitor, unburdened by antiquarian anti-quarian and historical knowledge, who may best estimate its power the tourist tour-ist who knows merely what he has gleaned, for instance, from reading over Baedeker's general synopsis on the voyage. He is aware of this float-ttg float-ttg power everywhere, yet unable to 3x it to a definite cause. It remains at .rge, evasive, singularly fascinating. Creates Blur in the Mind. All countries, of course. color :houg'it and memory, and work a spell upon the imagination of any but the jopelessly inanimate. Greece. India, lapan, Ireland or tlie Channel islands leave their mark and imprint whence the educational value of travel-psychology but from these the traveler brings back feelings and memories he can evoke at will and label. - He returns re-turns from Egypt with a marvelous blur. All, in differing terms, report a similar thing. From the first few months in Egypt, saturated maybe with overmuch, the mind recalls with definiteness nothing. There onmes to Its summons a coiossal p'edley that half stupefies; vast reaches of yellow sand drenched in a sunlight that stings; dim, solemn aisles of granite silence; stupendous monoliths that stare unblinking at the sun; the shin-: shin-: ing river, licking s.iftiy at the lips 'of t murderous desert : and an enormous night sky literally drowned in stars. A I score of temples melt down into a single monster; the Nile spreads everywhere; great pyramids float ; aero?.? the sky like clouds; palms rustle In midair; and from caverned leagues of subterranean floom there Issues a roar of voices, thunderous yet muffled, that seem to utter the hieroglyphics hiero-glyphics of a forgotten tongue. The entire mental horizon, oddly lifted, brims with this procession of gigantic things, then empties again without a word of explanation, leaving a litter of big adjectives chasing one another chaotically chief among them "mysterious," "mys-terious," "unchanging," "formidable," "terrific ." But the single, bigger memory mem-ory that should link all these together Intelligibly hides from sight the emotion emo-tion too deep for specific recognition, too vast, somehow, for articulate recovery. re-covery. The Acropolis, the wonders of Japan and India, the mind can grasp or thinks so; but this composite enormity ef Bamesseum, Serapeum. Karnak, Cheops. Sphinx, with a hundred temples tem-ples and a thousand miles of sand, it knows it cannot. The mind is a blank. Egypt, it seems, has faded. Menory certainly fails, and description wilts. There seems nothing precisely to report, re-port, no interesting, clear, intelli&i'ole thing. "What did you see in Egypt? What did you like best? What impression impres-sion did Egypt make upon you?" seem questions impossible to answer. Imagination Imagi-nation flickers, stammers and goes out. Thought hesitates and stops. A little shudder, probably, makes itself felt. There is an important attempt to describe de-scribe a temple or two, an expedition on donkej'back into the desert ; but it sounds unreal, the language wrons?, foolish, even, affected. The dreadful post card rises like a wall. "Oh, I liked it all immensely. The delightful delight-ful dry heat, you know and one can always count upon the weather for picnics arranged ahead, and " until the conversation can be changed to theaters or the crops at home. Yet, behind the words, behind the post card, one is aware all the time of some huge, alluring thing, alive with a pageantry of ages, strangely brilliant, dignified, magnificent, appealing almost al-most to tears something that drifts past like a ghostly full-rigged vessel with crowded decks and sails painted in an underworld, and yet the whole too close before the eyes for proper sight. The spell has become operative 1, Having been warned to expect this, I, personally, had yet remained skeptical until I experienced the truth. . . . And it was undeniably disappointing. After time and money spent, one had apparently brought back so little. Monstrous to Some. For some, a rather dominant impression impres-sion is undoubtedly "the monstrous." A splendor of awful dream, yet never quite of nightmare, stalks everywhere, suggesting an atmosphere of Khubla Khan. There is nothing lyrical. Even the silvery river, the slender palms, the fields of clover and barley and the acres of flashing poppies convey no lyrical sweetness, as elsewhere they might. All moves to a statelier measure. meas-ure. Stern issues of life and death are in the air. and in the grandeur of the tombs and temples there is a solemnity of genuine awe that makes the blood run slow a little. Those Theban hills, where the kings and qu'eens lay buried, are forbidding to the point of discomfort almost. The listening silence in the grim Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the intolerable intoler-able glare of sunshine on the stones, the naked absence of any sign of animal ani-mal or vegetable life, the slow approach ap-proach to the secret hiding place where the mummy of a once powerful power-ful monarch lies ghastly now- beneath the glitter of an electric light, the im p'r.cable desert, deadly with heat and distance on every side this picture, I once seen, rather colors one's memory of the rest of Egypt with its somber and funereal character. And with the great derfic monoliths the effect is similar. Proportions and sheer size strike blow' after blow upon the mind. Stupendous figures, shrouded shroud-ed to the eyes, shoulder their way slowly through the shifting sands, deathless themselves and half-appal-ing. Their attitudes and gestures express ex-press the hieroglvphic drawings come to life. Their towering heads, coiffed with zodiacal signs, or grotesque with animal or bird, bend down to watch you everywhere. There is no hurry in them ; they move with the leisure of the moon, with the stateliness of the sun, with the slow silence of the constellations. con-stellations. But they move. There is, between vou and them, this effect of a screen, erected by the ages, yet that any moment may turn thin and lot them through upon you. A hand of shadow, but with granite grip, may steal forth and draw you away into some region where they dwell among changeless symbols like themselves, a region vast, ancient and undifferentiated undifferenti-ated as the desert that has produced them. Their effect in the end is weird, difficult to describe, but real. Talk with a mind that has been steeped for years in their atmosphere and presence, pres-ence, and you will appreciate thie odd reality. The spell of Egypt is an other worldly world-ly spell. Its vagueness, its eltisiveness, Ita undeniable reality are ingredients, at any rate, in a total result whose detailed de-tailed analysis lies hidden in mystery ucd silence inscrutable. |