Thursday, April 21, 2005

Travellers in Egypt

Lotus and Pyramid: Constance - Constance Sitwell, 1928
http://www.travellersinegypt.org/archives/2005/04/white_bird_in_h.html
"I am sitting on the window-sill in my room eating sugar-cane. It is so juicy and fresh one could go on nibbling at it all day. The Soudanese servant, in a green cap and full green trousers, just now brought in a basket-full cut up into pieces, and set it down on the floor with a wide smile. My window is high above the ground; beneath, the whitewashed walls of the hotel ache in the midday glare; across the sand I can see the two great Pyramids, all their colour bleached out by the fierce light. But early this morning they looked very different. Just as the sun rose I came to this window and saw them standing there drowsily splendid, a tigerish gold set on the tigerish sand".
An extract from "Lotus and Pyramid" by Constance Sitwell in 1928, on the Travellers In Egypt website. See the site to read more.
From Egypt and Nubia - by J.A. St. John, 1845
Adventures during a Visit to Lake Mœris: "the artificial sea of Mœris, quivering and glittering in the sun; and, in the distance forming the majestic background of the picture, a range of rocky mountains, of commanding elevation, arid, frowning, desolate, but invested with an air of gloomy grandeur highly congenial to the state of mind in which I viewed them". This is a long but lovely extract from "Egypt and Nubia" by J.A. St John, dating to 1845

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