Egypt and its Monuments by Robert Hichens

I do not find in Egypt any more the strangeness that once amazed, and at first almost bewildered me. Stranger far is Morocco, stranger the country beyond Biskra, near Mogar, round Touggourt, even about El Kantara. There I feel very far away, as a child feels distance from dear, familiar things. I look to the horizon expectant of I know not what magical occurrences, what mysteries. I am aware of the summons to advance to marvelous lands, where marvelous things must happen. I am taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvelous atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness.

In Egypt one feels very safe. Smiling policemen in clothes of spotless white -- emblematic, surely, of their innocence! -- seem to be everywhere, standing calmly in the sun. Very gentle, very tender, although perhaps not very true, are the Bedouin at the Pyramids. Up the Nile the fellaheen smile as kindly as the policemen, smile protectingly upon you, as if they would say, "Allah has placed us here to take care of the confiding stranger. " No ferocious demands for money fall upon my ears; only an occasional suggestion is subtly conveyed to me that even the poor must live and that I am immensely rich. An amiable, an almost enticing seductiveness seems emanating from the fertile soil, shining in the golden air, gleaming softly in the amber sands, dimpling in the brown, the mauve, the silver eddies of the Nile. It steals upon one. It ripples over one. It laps one as if with warm and scented waves. A sort of lustrous languor overtakes one. In physical well-being one sinks down, and with wide eyes one gazes and listens and enjoys, and thinks not of the morrow.