and glittered and dazzled like the sea at home when the sun
shines on it.

They were standing on a little clearing in a thick, low forest;
there were trees and shrubs and a close, thorny, tangly
undergrowth. In front of them stretched a bank of strange black
mud, then came the browny-yellowy shining ribbon of a river.
Then more dry, caked mud and more greeny-browny jungle. The only
things that told that human people had been there were the
clearing, a path that led to it, and an odd arrangement of cut
reeds in the river.

They looked at each other.

'Well!' said Robert, 'this IS a change of air!'

It was. The air was hotter than they could have imagined, even
in London in August.

'I wish I knew where we were,' said Cyril.

'Here's a river, now--I wonder whether it's the Amazon or the
Tiber, or what.'

'It's the Nile,' said the Psammead, looking out of the fish-bag.

'Then this is Egypt,' said Robert, who had once taken a geography
prize.

'I don't see any crocodiles,' Cyril objected. His prize had been