Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

INTRODUCTORY.

3

when we witness the same glow in the Greek islands,
where the banished Apostle saw the Holy City descend
from the skies in its splendour of sard and beryl, of
sapphire and amethyst. At night the yellow glory of the
moon walking in brightness makes but a softer day,
or the deep blue sky of Egypt is lit up by many-
coloured stars. The plague that foreshadowed the last
and heaviest of all was the darkness that could be felt.«

We must think of this strange beauty of Egypt if we
would know why she has drawn to herself the Arab and
the Hebrew from their life of freedom, and has yet a
witchery for modern hearts, to prove the truth of the
native saying that he who has drunk of the water of the
Nile must return to drink of it again. We can see why
the Egyptian has clung to his land with a love that is not
patriotism, but a blind instinct of enjoyment, the sense
of life that in the North wakens the world in spring
alone. For all moves in harmony with nature, and ex-
istence is not without joy be the taskmaster's rod ever
so heavy.

Egypt on the maps is not this wonderful land. We
look and see a vast oblong space squared out in the
north-eastern corner of Africa. This is a fiction of the
B 2