Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/103

traveller, largely, no doubt, in virtue of its strange legend, than this, the so-called Vocal Memnon; yet, seen after the Sphinx, it disappoints. Its position and surroundings are against it. All the associations of the Sphinx are with the loneliness of the inhuman desert, with the leagues of barren wind-blown sand, in the midst of which it rests half buried, and which in the course of ages has again and again submerged it. The Colossi, it is true, have the bare yellow spurs of the Libyan range behind them; but their feet are actually set in the verdure of cultivation, and they look over smiling plots of wheat and lentil and dura, a kindly land enriched by human labour and made cheerful with the voice of man. Placed where they are they have too much the air of transported antiquities, of gigantic "curios" brought over from their native site and planted by some eccentric English landed proprietor in the midst of his fields. Arab fanaticism, moreover, or the rage of the Persian conqueror, has chipped