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Show 158 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 26 they look, upon the giant flood rolling its dark waters at their base, hurrying past them to the deep. So has it been with the massive tombs of Egypt, amid the sands and barrenness of the desert. For ages untold have the gloomy pyramids been reflected by the inundations of the Nile; an hundred generations, they tell us, have arisen from the cradle and reposed beneath their shadows, and, like autumn leaves, have dropped into the grave; but from the deep midnight of by- gone centuries comes forth no daring spirit to claim these kingly sepulchres as his own! And shall the dusky piles on the plains of distant Egypt affect so deeply our reverence for the [ 131] departed, and these mighty monuments, reposing in dark sublimity upon our own magnificent prairies veiled in mystery more inscrutable than they, call forth no solitary throb? Is there no hallowing interest associated with these aged relics, these tombs, and temples, and towers of another race, to elicit emotion? Are they indeed to us no more than the dull clods we tread upon? Why, then, does the wanderer from the far land gaze upon them with wonder and veneration? Why linger fondly around them, and meditate upon the power which reared them and is departed ? Why does the poet, the man of genius and fancy, or the philosopher of mind and nature, seat himself at their base, and, with strange and undefined emotions, pause and ponder amid the loneliness which slumbers around? And surely, if the far traveller, as he wanders through this Western Valley, may linger around these aged piles and meditate upon a power departed, a race obliterated, an influence swept from the earth for ever, and dwell with melancholy emotions upon the destiny of man, is it not meet that those into whose keeping they seem by Providence consigned should regard them with interest and emotion? that they should gather up and preserve every incident relevant to |