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nerving myself for what was to come, but when I heard the scourge whizzing through the air, and, when the first blow fell upon the naked feet, saw the convulsive movements of the body, and heard the first loud, piercing shriek, I could stand it no longer; I broke through the crowd, forgetting the governor and every thing else, except the agonizing sounds from which I was escaping; but the janizary followed close at my heels, and, laying his hand upon my arm, hauled me back to the governor. If I had consulted merely the impulse of feeling, I should have consigned him, and the governor, and the whole nation of Turks, to the lower regions; but it was all important not to offend this summary dispenser of justice, and I never made a greater sacrifice of feeling to expediency, than when I re-entered his presence. The shrieks of the unhappy criminal were ringing through the chamber, but the governor received me with as calm a smile as if he had been sitting on his own divan, listening only to the strains of some pleasant music, while I stood with my teeth clinched, and felt the hot breath of the victim, and heard the whizzing of the accursed whip, as it fell again and again. upon his bleeding feet. I have heard men cry out in agony when the sea was raging, and the drowning man, rising for the last time upon the mountain waves, turned his imploring arms towards us, and with his dying breath called in vain for help; but I never heard such heart-rending sounds as those from the poor bastinadoed wretch before me. I thought the governor would never make an end

of reading the letter, when the scribe handed it to him for his signature, although it contained but half a dozen lines; he fumbled in his pocket for his seal, and dipped it in the ink; the impression did not suit him, and he made another, and after a delay that seemed to me eternal, employed in folding it, handed it to me with a most gracious smile. I am sure I grinned horribly in return, and almost snatching the letter, just as the last blow fell, I turned to hasten from the scene. The poor scourged wretch was silent; he had found relief in happy insensibility; I cast one look upon the senseless body, and saw the feet laid open in gashes, and the blood streaming down the legs. At that moment the bars were taken away, and the mangled feet fell like lead upon the floor. I had to work my way through the crowd, and before I could escape I saw the poor fellow revive, and by the first natural impulse rise upon his feet, but fall again as if he had stepped upon red-hot irons. He crawled upon his hands and knees to the door of the hall, and here I rejoiced to see that, miserable, and poor, and degraded as he was, he yet had friends whose hearts yearned towards him; they took him in their arms and carried him away.

I was sick of Cairo, and in a right humour to bid farewell to cities, with all their artificial laws, their crimes and punishments, and all the varied shades of inhumanity from man to man, and in a few minutes I was beyond the gate, and galloping away to join my companions in the desert. At the tombs

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of the califs I found Paul with my caravan; but I had not yet escaped the stormy passions of men. With the cries of the poor Arab still ringing in my ears, I was greeted with a furious quarrel, arising from the apportionment of the money I had paid my guides. I was in no humour to interfere, and, mounting my dromedary, and leaving Paul to arrange the affair with them as he best could, I rode on alone. It was a journey of no ordinary interest, on which I was now beginning my lonely way. I had travelled in Italy, among the mountains of Greece, the plains of Turkey, the wild steppes of Russia, and the plains of Poland, but neither of these afforded half the material for curious expec tation that my journey through the desert promised. After an interval of 4000 years, I was about to pursue the devious path of the children of Israel, when they took up the bones of Joseph and fled before the anger of Pharaoh, among the mountain passes of Sinai, and through that great and terrible desert which shut them from the Land of Promise. I rode on in silence and alone for nearly two hours, and just as the sun was sinking behind the dark mountains of Mokattam, halted to wait for my little caravan; and I pitched my tent for the first night in the desert, with the door opening to the distant land of Goshen.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Caravan.-Arab Political Economy.-A projected Railroad. -The Sirocco.-Suez.-A travelled Englishman.-The Red Sea.-Embarcation of Pilgrims.—A Misadventure.-Scriptural Localities.-The bitter Fountain.

THE arrangements for my journey as far as Mount Sinai had been made by Mr. Gliddon. It was necessary to have as my guides some of the Bedouins from around the mountains, and he had procured one known to him, a man in whom I could place the most implicit confidence; and possessing another not less powerful recommendation; in the fact that he had been with Messrs. Linant and Laborde to Petra. My caravan consisted of eight camels and dromedarics, and, as guide and camel-drivers, three young Bedouins from nineteen to twenty-two years old. My tent was the common tent of the Egyptian soldiers, bought at the government factory, easily carried, and as easily pitched; my bedding was a mattress and coverlet; and I had, moreover, a couple of boxes, about eighteen inches high, and the width of my mattress, filled with eatables, which I carried slung over the back of a camel, one upon each side, and at night, by the addition of two pieces of board, converted into a bedstead. My store of provisions consisted of bread, biscuit, rice, macaroni, tea, coffee, dried

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apricots, oranges, a roasted leg of mutton, and two of the largest skins containing the filtered water of the Nile.

In the evening, while we were sitting around a fire, I inquired the cause of the quarrel from which I had escaped, and this led Toualeb into an explanation of some of the customs of the Bedouins. There exists among them that community of interest and property, for which radicals and visionaries contend in civilized society. The property of the tribe is to a great extent common, and their earnings, or the profits of their labour, are shared among the whole. A Bedouin's wives are his own; and as the chastity of women is guarded by the most sanguinary laws, his children are generally his own; his tent, also, and one or two camels are his, and the rest belongs to his tribe. The practical operation of this law is not attended with any great difficulty; for in general the rest, or that which belongs to the tribe, is nothing; there are no hoarded treasures, no coffers of wealth, the bequest of ancestors, or the gains of enterprise and industry, to excite the cupidity of the avaricious. Poor is the Bedouin born, and poor he dies, and his condition is more than usually prosperous when his poverty does not lead him to the shedding of blood.

I did not expect to learn lessons of political economy among the Bedouin Arabs, but in the commencement of my journey with them, I found the embarrassment and evil of trammelling individual enterprise and industry. The consul had applied 10 Toualeb. Toualeb was obliged to propose the