Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1859-10-19
ToMBs AND THEIR LESSONS.

have been much affected by sundry visits
paid to Arab graveyards. These are general
ly outside the walls of the city, exposed to the
blasts of the desert, and are often covered with
simple memorial stones, which have no name
or mark inscribed upon them, whereby one
grave may be distinguished from another.
There the Moslems lie, often without collin OF
any kind, and shielded only by the shifting
sands of the wilderness. Perhaps few palm
trees cast their shadows over the desolation.
while the monumental tomb of some Moslem
shekh or saint, haliows and consecrates the
whole. Thus beyond the walls of Cairo. toward
the East, the ruined tombs of the Memlook
SutanS stretch away into the desert, pictur
esque and graceful in their forms, and sur
rounded on every side by the aforementioned
dead, all gazing intently Gas their living breth-
rem say) toward the birthplace of the prophet;
and all so placed that they may rise on their
knees when the angel of the Presence shall
sound his last trumpet-peal to their long deaf
ened ears. The most elaborate pretenson to
a cemetery that / saw in the East, was at the
town of Stout, the capital of Middle Egypt;
where some of the wealthier among the Arab
chiefs and Turkish governor had prepared,
near to the memorial mosque of celebrated
saint, tombs and vaults which they had adorn-
ed with rude paintings of boats, houses and
palm-t trees, interspersed with passages from
the Koran. Among them fall the shadows of
living palm beauty, and the smile of gay flow
impressive burial-place that L have ever seen,
is the great Arab graveyard at Assouan, the
Syene of Scripture. 1t is just on the
boundary line between Egypt and Nubia,
within sound of the roar OF the Cataracts Of the
Nile, and stretching away to the immense
granite quarries, where the monolithal obelisks
and spynxes were fashioned, and whence they
were transported to the temples which they
afterwards adorned. The metropolis of Syene
is most desolate sscity of the dead" Seven
ty thousand Moslem saints are buried here.an
some OF them were of great notoriety. The
height of the hills are crowned with monumen-
tai mosques, and the vast undulating plain is
dotted over with tombs built of brick or moul-
ded clay. Still the majority of the dead sleep
beneath no other shelter than the golden sands
of the Nuban desert, under the shadow of the
purple rocks, and loud at night is the howl Of
the hyenas, as they gather to their obscene re-
past. How have human heart strings snapped,
and human eyes failed for weeping, in this
grand CHASTITY burial place How long has
| been the conflict! How silent is the rest The
men who hewed the obelisks of Luxor from
their homes in the virgin rock lie buried here.
| The crowds who watched the gilded barges of
the great Rameses as they lay moored below
the Cataracts, while he made a royal progress
to the rock temples of Nubia the companies
of Greek musicians or Roman soldiers, of Per-
sian priests and devotees of the sun, of the
crocodile, or the buried Osiris, who once ell
bowed each other on the gay esplanade of the
island of Elephantina Ptolemaic princes, ex-
cited Romans, early Christians, Saraeenic
chiefs and wild Arabs of the desert-haye here
found their last long resting place.