L Frank Baum

The Last Egyptian L Frank Baum

An Egyptian romance of the present time, full of the charm of the land of the Nile and dramatic in plot and setting. The book is a most creditable romance vibrant with human nature and the mystery and fascination of the East. A young Englishman, with an abundant fortune and a passion for Egyptology, visits the village of Al-Kusiyeh because of the rumor that ancient arms and jewels had come from the Sheik. There he meets Kara, the lineal descendant of the great Athka-Ra and grandson of Princess Hatatcha, who, at seventeen, captivated London and Lord Roane, who divorced his wife for her sake, but whom she refused to marry. Their daughter was Kara's mother. Lord Roan's grand-daughter was the one unselfish, honest love of his life, and he and his dissolute son are given government positions in Cairo, where the Englishman and Kara both meet, and wish to marry the grand-daughter. Jealousy, treachery, plot and counterplot are thrown against a background of ancient custom and belief. It is a story of a vendetta, in which an Egyptian prince-to avenge the wrong of his grandmother-pits himself against the love of an Englishman for the possession of the woman who is by blood his cousin. The sun fell hot upon the bosom of the Nile and clung there, vibrant, hesitating, yet aggressive, as if baffled in its desire to penetrate beneath the river's lurid surface. For the Nile defies the sun, and relegates him to his own broad domain, wherein his power is undisputed. On either side the broad stream humanity shrank from Ra's seething disc. The shaduf workers had abandoned their skin-covered buckets and bamboo poles to seek shelter from the heat beneath a straggling tree or a straw mat elevated on stalks of ripe sugar-cane. The boats of the fishermen lay in little coves, where the sails were spread as awnings to shade their crews. The fellaheen laborers had all retired to their clay huts to sleep through this fiercest period of the afternoon heat.