of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have

been as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the

necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass was

begun. I only set down these figures and these remarks to suggest the

prodigious labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so

faultlessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that

figures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the weather

for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a hundred years of

patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It seems probable.

Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and walk upon the

sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great mosque of Mehemet Ali,

whose entire inner walls are built of polished and glistening alabaster;

I shall not tell how the little birds have built their nests in the

globes of the great chandeliers that hang in the mosque, and how they

fill the whole place with their music and are not afraid of any body

because their audacity is pardoned, their rights are respected, and

nobody is allowed to interfere with them, even though the mosque be thus

doomed to go unlighted; I certainly shall not tell the hackneyed story of

the massacre of the Mamelukes, because I am glad the lawless rascals were

massacred, and I do not wish to get up any sympathy in their behalf; I

shall not tell how that one solitary Mameluke jumped his horse a hundred

feet down from the battlements of the citadel and escaped, because I do

not think much of that--I could have done it myself; I shall not tell of

Joseph's well which he dug in the solid rock of the citadel hill and

which is still as good as new, nor how the same mules he bought to draw

720

The Innocents Abroad