DRAB SIDE OF TREASURE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 1400, 13 September 1909, Page 4

DRAB SIDE OF TREASURE.

The work of the excavator in Egvi.' has immense rewards, but it has als< great disappointments, and is genet ally of a high'v unromantie natur* 1 Those who go into it dreaming of it'covering passages of marble and cbe=t of gold and jewels are speedily disil lusioned. Mr. Arthur Weigall. Chief •Inspector of the Department of And quities in Egypt, tells in the Pall M-'H an amusing story of such a man. He was an immaculate young English^.-:. and was lured to the rums or an ancient Egyptian city by his love uf d'd:;iatic adventure. "He expected t" ■slide upon the seat of his well-'inJ.-troupers down the staircise of tlie 1 ;iined palace which he had entered by aav of the skylight, and co find Lifni •self, at the bottom, in the presence c.t the bejewelled dead.'' Instead of t»ii«Ite saw bedraggled net've* slush -nu through mud, laying bare the outltii' c f palo.ee walls, and was kej)t to tl' birring task of superintending r.atuo digging a large hole in the dc-oiat desert sand, Jay after day a.-d a—l. .after week. e>o much- lic-cr»bd ji« illicit cAcnvation has bt'»*r. doiie_ 11 !Kgypt that disappointment is oftej the end of a long and laborious »it ci work. Mr. Weigall spent weeks in ex civating supposed royal tombs nei! Abydos, to find one tomb empty in i i:i the sarcophagus in the otK-r no thing but a French ncwjjiaper left b" \ indby the last excavator. Six weeks work at another place produced on< nuimmified cat. The excavator l»ve in a bare little hut constructed of 1; <v «q) roofed with cornstalks or corrugated iron. If there is a rain „ton> "one m*T watch th» frail buildim gently subside in liquid mud on tone's bed and books." There is nday of rest, the sun is scorching, an'i the flies annoying. Such work Inlainly for the pnthusiast only. Mr. Weigall tell* a gruesome ttory of .- native who ditcovere'l the entrance ir, a tomb on his property, and desrende 1 to explore it. He did not come back A few hours later his wife went doivr. the tunnel. She also did not come hack. Three otber members of tbr family went down, and that was the end of them. A native official w'-n* down, bus was driven back by foul air Resovery of- th-* bodies being impossible, the tomb wa» sealed up. Accord in« to the natives there was a vast tieasure in the tomb, and the demon ir. charg* of it strangled the natms as they desceoded. The superstition. might imagine borne connection b< - I tweon the tragedy and the gho»t ot tn< tomb's occupant stung to lovenge l>> Hie attempted desecration ot lis h\<