The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1890-06-20
SUNRISE ON THE NILE.
A Grand Scene Which Leaves AN IndelIble
Picture the BehOlder's Mind.

A Grand Scene Which Leaves an IndelIbIe
Picture on the BehOlder's Mind.
1t was an ancient belief of the Egypt
ians that the sun died in his western
bed and was recreated for the work of
the next day. thus keeping himself in a
state of perpetual youth; and to those
who on the Nile have watched his rising
from the regions of darkness, the idea is
not bad one.
Around you is the river, cool and
dewy in the early morning, with deep
coloring of green upon its quiet bosom.
To your right and your left strips of
fertile valley, and beyond it the great
Lybian and Arabian deserts stretch
away into vast seas of sand in the east,
and in the west widen out into broad
plain, dotted with some of the grandest
ruins the world has ever seen; while
farther away a line of hills marks the
entrance to the desolate valley of the
Tombs, where so many of the Pharaohs
were buried. 1t is a quiet, peaceful
scene, with no coloring in it as yet; but
a change is coming over it, and you
watch the gray of the hills and the green
of the river as they take on, first
golden, and then a crimson glow from
the eastern sky where the sun is just
beginning to show himself, rising, as it
were. from the sands of the desert, and
flooding the whole heavens with his
brightness.
To the west the sunbeams fall on the
ruins of the Rameseum, lighting up the
Osiride columns which support the en-
trance to its great court, then falling up
on the huge pillars of the corridors be-
yond. they bring into greater dis
tinctness the hieroglyphics and
bas-reliefs which adorn that won
derful relic of glorious past
Even the broken statue of Rameses the
Great, which once stood or sat sixty feet
high, monster king of stone, seems to
take on life and motion as the sunbeams
creep in and out and over and around it,
until in fancy you see it as it was thou
sands of years ago, seated in its chair,
with its huge hands upon its knees and
it's deep set eyes keeping watch over the
great city swarming with human life.
And from the broken statue and the
Osiride columns of the Rameseum the
sun moves on until it strikes the palace
of Rameses Ill, where the naughty
monarch once walked in his pride
through his marble halls, looking out,
it may be, on just such sunrise as this,
which is now covering river and ruin
and sands alike with mantle of purple
and gold, and converting into pillars OF
fire the two Colossi, who, with their
faces to the east, have sat watching and
waiting no one knows how long and no
one knows for what And as the full
beams of the sun fall upon the face OF
the Vocal Memnon, of which in your
childhood you read with feeling OF
awe, you involuntarily find yourself
listening for the cry of JOY with which
it was said to have greeted the early
morning. But the Memnon is silent
now, mourning perhaps for the desola-
ton which has fallen upon that once
populous plain, and neither dawn. MOI
noon, nor night can wiring sound from
its fast sealed lips.
And so you leave it in its Loneliness
and grandeur and turn your face towards
Karnak and Luxor. which are still in
the shadow, but which soon begin tC
brighten in the sunlight that shines
through the great Hall of Karnak, and
glancing of from the gilded top Of
Queen Hatasu's obelisx, strikes on the
ruins of Luxor just as you step from the
boat upon the shore with a picture in
your mind of what few have ever seen
a Sunrise on the Nile.-Ladies' Home
Journal.