LAND OF ENCHANTMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 76, 30 March 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

LAND OF ENCHANTMENT.

(By Desmond Jenkins, 27, Mount Roskin Kd„ Auckland, 5.3.; age 14.)

Cairo, city of the Nile. A crowd 01 porters invade the steamer as she bel'ths demanding in innumerable tongues employment as luggage bearers or guides, while the sea is infested with native craft bearing more porters, ragged children, and merchants all demanding attention at once and shouting at the top' of their voices. Eorging a difficult way through the throngs of natives one next encounters the arabeyeh boys who, for the price of a few piastres couveys passengers to a palatial hotel set among a waving maze of tall palms. Typical of Mohammedan architecture, the city of the Nile abounds in minarets and domes, which make an inspiring sight when silhouetted against a background of burnished gold. Let us, after a visit to the catacombs, journey through the murky streets of Cairo to the great Pyramids, chiefly that of Cheops. Rising above its neighbours this invincible structure has defied for many centuries the ravages of time. On gaining the summit of the monument a view of the grandest, and most imposing character presents itself. To-the west a confusion o£ sands and cliffs stretch. Southward stands the Pyramids of Saklcara against a void of deepest blue. North and east are the cultivated lands of the Nile, the Mokattam Mountains, and, shimmering in the desert heat, Cairo.

Many tombs meet tue eye and one perceives the Spliinx in its hollow; standing in the quarry from which the material for the great Pyramid had been taken by the commands, of Khephron, the successor of Cheops, five thousand years ago. Strange enough it was to survey the scene on which had gazed Herodotus, the Father of History, five hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era. Strange enough to gaze "where Julius Caesar and Marc Antony had gazed; to look 011 what had met. the dark eyes of Cleopatra, the Serpent of the Nile. Alas! Time had taken its toll —a mighty empire had fallen midst the ruins of its own misdoings, the Pharaohs had gone, only their remains rested in the sarcophagi of the silent tombs; and the Caliphs and the Mamelukes—but the Nile still. rolled its life giving waters, and the Sphinx still regarded the silence and mystery of the desert. A camel train slowly wends its way over the burning sands of the Libyan Desert, a cool breeze from the Nile ripples the waters of a nearby oasis, and a vulture with a hoarse cry rises into the blue sky. Mounted on sturdy donkeys one leaves the Pyramids, and in the course of an hour's ride over the sandy wastes the half-submerged pillars of a forgotten temple appear on the horizon, it is of Egyptian architecture, I a building whose name and time of | construction are lost in the realms of antiquity. A flight of stone steps lead

to the entrance where possibly in early years a mighty iron-stuckled door had stood. The interior of the temple was partly illuminated owing to portions of the roof' having collapsed. The main entrance joined a courtyard from which doors led to all parts of the building. Heaps of masonry lay on all sides; many stono pillars unable to cope with time had crumbled and fallen; and indeed, it seemed as if at any moment the whole structure must be razed to the ground. It was certainly a place for meditation.

Slowing the sun recedes from gilding a thousand sand-dunes with brilliant radiance. Following a short twilight, night, with a velvety cloak of star 3, falls on the desert. Twinkling lights from Cairo appear, while a triangular sailed dhow glides down the moonlit Nile to the accompaniment of a native singer. And, far out in the moonlit desert, the Sphinx still with unseeing eyes gazes pensively over the sandy wastes of Figypt, the land of mystery and enchantment.