The light of the coming day shone along the latter, a sandy waste, overlooked by Jebel Mokattam, a chain of rocks abrupt and barren that extends from Cairo to the cataracts. They are generally flat, with beetling summits, while below, on the face which fronts the Nile, they are furrowed as if water-worn by the rain of ages.
On the other flank, towards Jebel Dimeshk, rises a ridge of sand-hills that follows in the same direction at an equal distance, all the windings and sinuosities of that which lines the eastern bank.
Between lay the winding line of the disused railway. In front the horizon seemed foggy or dusty, and along the desert the sun shone for a time, as he rose, like a red ball, shorn of his rays.
In rear the party left behind the village of Matarieh, with the clumps of palm-trees, beyond which, with the tall obelisk and the ruins of several sphinxes, rose the great mounds of earth that mark the site of Heliopolis, 'the City of the Sun,' the inhabitants of which worshipped a bull called Mnevis, with the same ceremonies as the Apis of Memphis, and where Apollo had an oracle.
Over the same ground where in 1800 a battle was fought between the French and Turks, in which the latter were defeated with the loss of eight thousand men and all their cannon and baggage, Allan's little band marched merrily on towards the desert in hope to 'polish off' a few of the Bedouins before returning to quarters.
They were well supplied with ammunition; each man had a day's rations in his haversack, and his water-bottle filled with the red sandy fluid of the Nile. In Exodus we are told that the Egyptians loathed to drink the waters of that river, and, as Cameron said, 'the men of the Black Watch were much of the same mind.'
Now, in making a reconnaissance, Allan Graham was a trained soldier enough to know that cover from view is important, as it enables troops, whatever their strength, to form for action; thus he hoped to utilise the railway bank, or, if not that, some of the sandy undulations around it.
As the first object in reconnoitring is to get observation, with his sergeant, who was a sharp fellow, he went at some distance in front of his men, field-glass in hand, and looked sharply about him.
He continued to move in a north-easterly direction for nearly ten miles till mid-day, but saw nothing of Bedouins, and then, halting amid a clump of palms, threw out some sentinels towards the front, piled arms, and the Highlanders in their kilts and red serges threw themselves on the grass and prepared to make a meal of what they had brought with them, washed down by Nile water.
There he remained till noon was long past, and he began to think of falling back on Matarieh.