dish. For my own part, as I did not know what was coming next, if any thing, I felt loath to part with it. My companions were knowing ones, and seemed to be of the same way of thinking, and without any consultation all appeared to be approaching the same end, to wit, the end of the stew. With the empty dish before him, demonstrative to Paul that so far we were perfectly satisfied with what he had done, that worthy purveyor came forward with an increase of dignity, to change our plates. I now saw that something more was coming. I had suspected from the beginning that Paul was in the mutton line, and involuntarily murmured, "this day a sheep has died;" and presently on came another cut of the murdered innocent, in cutlets, accompanied by fried potatoes. Then came boiled mutton and boiled potatoes, and then roast mutton and roast potatoes, and then came a macaroni paté. I thought this was going to damn the whole; until this I had considered the dinner as something extraordinary and recherché. But the macaroni, the thing of at least six days in the week, utterly disconcerted me. I tried to give Paul a wink to keep it back, but on he came; if he had followed with a chicken, I verily believe I should have thrown it at his head. But my friends were unflinching and uncompromising. They were determined to stand by Paul to the last, and we laid in the macaroni paté, with as much vigour as if we had not already eaten a sheep. Paul wound us up and packed

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us down with pancakes. I never knew a man that did not like pancakes, or who could not eat them even at the tail of a mighty dinner. And now, feeling that happy sensation of fulness which puts a man above kings, princes, or pachas, we lighted our long pipes and smoked. Our stomachs were full and our hearts were open. Talk of mutual sympathy, of congenial spirits, of similarity of tastes, and all that. 'Tis the dinner which unlocks the heart; you feel yourself warming towards the man that has dined with you. The parts of the several animals which you have forcibly separated seem drawing together and carrying you with them. It was in this happy spirit that we lay like warriors, resting on our arms, and talked over the particulars of our battle.

And now, all dignity put aside and all restraint removed, and thinking my friends might have recognised acquaintances among the things at the table which were strangers to me, and thinking, too, that I stood on a pinnacle, and come what might I could not fall, I led the way in speculating upon the manner in which Paul had served us. The ice once broken, my friends solved many of the mysteries, by claiming this, that, and the other as part of their furniture and stores. In fact, they were going on most unscrupulously, making it somewhat doubtful whether I had furnished any thing for my own dinner, and I called in Paul. But that functionary had no desire to be questioned; he hemmed, and hawed, and dodged about; but I

told him to make a clean heart of it, and then it came out, but it was like drawing teeth, that he had been on a regular foraging expedition among their stores. The potatoes with which he had made such a flourish were part of a very small stock furnished them by a friend, as a luxury not to be had on the Nile; and instead of the acknowledgments which I expected to receive on account of my dinner, my friends congratulated me rather ironically upon possessing such a treasure of a steward. We sat together till a late hour; were grave, gay, laughing, and lachrymose by turns ; and when we began to doze over our pipes, betook ourselves to slumber.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Ascent of the Cataracts.-A nautical Patriarch.-Political Improvement.-A Nubian Damsel's Wardrobe.-A test of Friendship.-East and West.-Moonlight on the Nile.-Uses of a Temple.

In the morning we were up betimes, expecting another stirring day in mounting the Cataracts. Carrying boats up and down these rapids is the great business of the Nubians, who live on the borders of Egypt. It is a business that requires great knowledge and address; and the rais who commands the large squad of men necessary to mount a boat, is an important person among them. He was already there with part of his men, the others being stationed among the islands of the Cataracts, at the places where their services would be needed. This rais was one of the most noblelooking men I ever saw. He was more than eighty, a native of Barbary, who had in early life. wandered with a caravan across the Libyan desert, and been left, he knew not why, on a little island among the Cataracts of the Nile. As the Nubian does now, firmly seated on a log and paddling with his hands, he had floated in every eddy, and marked every stone that the falling river lays bare to the eye; and now, with the experience of years, he stood among the Nubians, confessedly one of

their most skilful pilots, through a difficult and sometimes dangerous navigation. He was tall and thin, with a beard of uncommon length and whiteness, a face dried, scarred, and wrinkled, and dark as it could be without having the blackness of a negro. His costume was a clean white turban, red jacket, and red sash, with white trousers, red slippers, and a heavy club fastened by a string around his wrist. I am particular in describing the appearance of the hardy old man, for we were exceedingly struck with it. Nothing could be finer than his look, his walk, his every movement; and the picturesque effect was admirably heightened by contrast with his swarthy assistants, most of whom were desperately ragged, and many of them as naked as they were born. The old man came on board with a dignity that savoured more of a youth passed amid the polish of a European court, than on the sands of Barbary, or the rude islands of the Nile. We received him as if he had been the great pacha himself, gave him coffee and pipes, and left him to the greatest luxury of the East, perfect rest, until his services should be required.

In the mean time, with a strong and favourable wind, we started from the little harbour of Assouan, while a throng of idlers, gathered together on the beach, watched our departure with as much interest as though it were not an event of almost daily occurrence. Almost immediately above Assouan the view extends over a broad surface, and the