of which have been already described. The musicians settled on the floor in one corner of the apartment, and the dancers stepped to the middle of the room. At a signal from the master of the house the dance began.

The dancers were young women, who were rather fantastically dressed. They wore "rings on their fingers and bells on their toes," as the old nursery rhyme has it, and their heads and necks were covered with a profusion of jewellery, consisting principally of gold and silver coins strung closely together, and so arranged that they jingled every time the wearers moved. A richly embroidered jacket, and a long skirt which nearly touched the floor, were the outer garments worn by the dancers. The

dresses of the four were precisely alike, and the Doctor said the costume was pretty much the same all through Egypt, where fashions rarely change from one year to another.

The boys had read of the wonderful beauty of the Egyptian dancers, and the great novelty of the scene they were about to witness. The Doc

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tor said nothing, but there was a smile on his features when the dance began. He knew that the youths were doomed to be disappointed, and in the first pause of the dance he asked them what they thought of it.

"If that is what they call dancing," said Frank, "I'm glad to know it. It seems more like the efforts of people learning to skate.”

"About as lively as the performance of the figures on a hand-organ," Fred remarked. "I wonder

why travellers have written so much nonsense about it."

"Some travellers have described the Egyptian dance in the most enthusiastic language," answered the Doctor, "and others thought they must do the same. It requires considerable courage to fly in the face of opinions that have been given over and over again by others, and consequently the fashion that was set long and long ago has been kept up.

"I have seen a good many dances in Egypt," he continued," and never yet knew one that approached the most of the descriptions I have read. Sometimes the girls are fairly pretty, but the great majority are of an ordinary type, and

AN EGYPTIAN KING ON HIS THRONE.

the dancing consists of that gliding and sliding from side to side which you have just witnessed. It is more suggestive of skating than of what is called dancing in Western countries."

The dance was resumed after a brief rest, and it continued with several intermissions for something over an hour. Coffee was served two or three times in the course of the evening, and when the entertainment was ended our friends returned to the steamer. Before they retired the conductor collected five francs from each passenger who had attended the dance, in order to remunerate the consul for his outlay. He said the consul went through the form of inviting strangers to an entertainment, but expected them to pay for it in a roundabout way.

"Not at all unusual in the East," the Doctor remarked, "and certainly no one could expect a consul to spend his money in the entertainment of every party of strangers that comes along. We can imagine we were his guests, and forget that we have paid for what we saw. The illusion is very thin, but it does no harm to any one."

The next day was devoted to an excursion to the Temple of Denderah, which is on the opposite side of the Nile from Keneh, and a ride of about an hour from the landing. The party was ferried over in the ordinary boats of the natives, and found donkeys waiting on the bank with the usual crowd of importunate natives.

The Temple of Denderah is the most modern in all Egypt, as it was built less than two thousand years ago. After one is accustomed to the pyramids, and similar structures of forty or fifty centuries, and comes to the Temple of Denderah, he hesitates to rub against it for fear the paint is not sufficiently dried.

But however much he may dislike the newness of the building, he can hardly fail to admire its solidity, and the magnificence of its halls and porticos. It is the best preserved of all the temples, as its walls and columns are practically uninjured, and the roof is almost entire. A mound of rubbish extends quite around it, and from a little distance the entrance of the temple is quite invisible.

The entrance is through a fine portico of twenty-four columns. On

the ceiling of this portico is a zodiac, which has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, as it was supposed to show that the signs of the

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zodiac were used by the ancient Egyptians. Recent discoveries show that it is of Roman origin, and less ancient than was at first believed. Every student of Egyptology has had something to say about it, and we may safely remark that there are more opinions on the subject than there are signs in the zodiac itself.

Considerable time was spent in the inspection of the temple, and in admiring the sculptures on the walls. Among them is a portrait of Cleopatra, which is supposed to have been made in the lifetime of that historic lady, and may therefore be regarded as a fair likeness of her. It does not represent her as a pretty woman, and therefore we may doubt whether she was as handsome as the artists of modern times have tried to make her. Some of those who wish to believe she was very pretty say the portrait at Denderah was made by an artist who never saw her, and did his work from an inaccurate likeness.

EGYPTIAN PRINCE CARRIED IN A PALANQUIN.

FRANK

CHAPTER XV.

ARRIVAL AT LUXOR.-THE GREAT TEMPLE OF KARNAK.

RANK and Fred were impatient to get away from Keneh, as their next halt was to be at Luxor, the ancient Thebes, where the steamer would remain three days, to enable them to see the monuments of ancient Egypt in that vicinity.

As the boat wound along the river in the direction of Thebes, the youths were watching from the deck for the first indications of their proximity to that wonderful city. Suddenly the sharp eyes of Fred caught sight of a sort of tower in the distance, and he at once called his cousin's attention to his discovery.

"Yes, and there's another, and another!" shouted Frank; "and the walls of a great building, too."

"That must be Karnak," said Fred. "You know they told us Karnak was a mile or more below Thebes, and its ruins were the first we would see."

"You are quite right," said the Doctor, who just then came up. "That is Karnak, or rather it is what remains of the great temple which, even in its ruin, is one of the wonders of the world."

"What a pity it is in ruins," one of the youths remarked. "Wouldn't it be nice if some rich man would amuse himself and spend his money by building a temple like what this once was? It would be so interesting and instructive."

"I'm afraid you are not likely to find the rich man who will do it," said the Doctor, with a smile. "It would take a vast amount of money, and he would be open to the charge of trying to revive the heathenism of the ancient Egyptians, and instructing the people of our time in idolatrous practices."

"I never thought of that," was the reply; "but any way I would like to see an Egyptian temple just as it was finished, and before it began to go to ruin."

"If a picture will satisfy you," the Doctor answered, "you have only