Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/339

made it my particular business to associate as much as possible with the native Arabs, whose ostensible business of guides and donkey masters is but a disguise, and, at the same time, a help to their real trade of grave robbers. Through my interpreter, I let it be known that I was willing to pay a good price for the mummy of some king or noble person—such mummies, being more carefully and skilfully embalmed, are in a much more perfect state of preservation. For some months I was fooled and fretted by these Arab swindlers and cheats, who would take me long distances to show some very common broken specimen. Finally, finding I would not be imposed upon, I received a call one night from a most villainous-looking native, who said for so much money he would introduce me to a certain Amed al Hamu, who could procure me what I wanted. To shorten a long story, I met Amed al Hamu, and after a week's dickering and bargaining made an appointment to meet him alone at his home—one could scarcely say house, for he lived in a sort of tomb cut out of the solid rock some twenty feet up a precipitous rock on the edge of the desert. At the appointed time he met me at the foot of the rock, and after cautiously looking to see if we were watched, led me to his cave. Passing through this, with light in hand we entered a narrow passage cut in the rock; through this we stooped and crawled for about a hundred yards; here the passage ended abruptly, as though unfinished. On one side, near the end, was a large crack or fissure, through which I squeezed myself after my guide, and stood upon the brink of a bottomless pit. From its hiding-place Amed al Hamu produced a rude specimen of rope-ladder, by the means of which we descended some ten feet into the pit; getting off on a ledge of rock I was ushered into a small cavern and found a really valuable mummy in an unusually fine mummy case, after showing which Amed offered to deliver it to me at some fifty per cent. above the price originally agreed