. Zigzag journeys in the Levant, with a Talmudist story-teller : a spring trip of the Zigzag club through Egypt and the Holy Land . difficult and tortuous as before. The rugged face of the rock became now padded soft with layers ofcrocodile fragments, which the sacrilegious hands of former visitants had strewnon their passage out. The great charnel-house of the crocodile world could notnow be distant. One effort more brought us upon several chambers, and atlast into one long, narrow cavern, where we had reward for all our toil, as wecrawled over the ever-increasing bodies of the crocodile dead
. Zigzag journeys in the Levant, with a Talmudist story-teller : a spring trip of the Zigzag club through Egypt and the Holy Land . difficult and tortuous as before. The rugged face of the rock became now padded soft with layers ofcrocodile fragments, which the sacrilegious hands of former visitants had strewnon their passage out. The great charnel-house of the crocodile world could notnow be distant. One effort more brought us upon several chambers, and atlast into one long, narrow cavern, where we had reward for all our toil, as wecrawled over the ever-increasing bodies of the crocodile dead. There they lay, heaps upon heaps, layer piled over layer, from what depthwe knew not upwards till flush with the roof. Each layer, where body wasseparated from body by palm-stems, was thickly and carefully covered withpalm-leaves, somewhat faded, indeed, but otherwise as fresh as though pluckedbut yesterday from groves which formed, as now, the glory of the worshippedriver. The sight, startling in itself, is almost overpowering when you ask. Howhad all these monster heaps, from the little tadpole of a day to the huge patri-. A J) I fTHE RUINS OF THE QUEEN CITY OF THE WORLD. 157 arch of three hundred (?) years, been gathered, and in such order, into thispathless world of unbroken night ? What spirit of evil ranged them in thiscavernous abyss of darkness side by side, the head of one to the tail of another,every chink and interval filled up with reptile-bundles in order due, in strangeeconomy of space ? For bundles of little crocodiles, eight or ten inches long,each swathed as carefully as the largest, are disposed in such intervals. Wherewas the entrance to the shrine devoted to these symbols of the god ? On ques-tions such as these reigns Egyptian darkness, deep as that which broodedaround us, — a darkness then felt the more, because broken only by the faintglimmer of our expiring light. My sight grew hazy, and breathing more difficult. The feeble light, whichI held aloft,
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