being savage, is singularly austere. Its chief episode is the great temple of Abousir, which with its attendant beacon-tower stands so magnificently upon the coastal ridge. And inland lie the marble basilicas of St. Menas and his holy well. But these apart, there is nothing to catch the attention. The tents of the Bedouins, so Mongolian in outline, seldom cut the lines of the sky, but blend in colour with the stone, against which they crouch. The quarries, vast and romantic, lie hidden in the flanks of the limestone. They do not play the part that a chalk-pit does in the landscape of the Sussex downs. The place is not a wilderness, it is a working concern. But it is essentially solitary, and only once a year does it, for a brief space, put its solitude away, and blossom.
There is nothing there of the ordered progress of the English spring, with its slow extension from wood-anemones through primroses into the buttercups of June. The flowers come all of a rush. One week there is nothing but spikes and buds, then the temperature rises or the wind drops, and whole tracts turn lilac or scarlet. They scarcely wait for their leaves, they are in such a hurry, and many of them blossom like little footstools, close to the ground. They do not keep their times. They scarcely keep their places, and you may look in vain for them this season where you found them last. There is a certain tract of yellow marigolds that I suspect of migration. One year it was in a quarry, the next by the railway line, now it has flown a distance of five and a half miles and unfolded its carpet on the slopes beneath Abousir. All is confusion and hurry. The white tassels of garlic
