fair way of attaining any honour at which his ambiticus spirit might aim. On my return to Alexandria, four months after, he was dead."pp. 38-42.

On the first of January, 1836, he left Cairo, and commenced his course up the Nile in a boat he had hired for the occasion. The travellers had a strong head wind to contend against, and made but little progress. After much labour they succeeded, by the eighth of the month, in reaching Minyeh. It was the season of Ramadan, when, as our readers know, for thirty days, from the rising to the setting of the sun, the followers of the prophet are forbidden to eat, drink, smoke, or take a bath. This last luxury our countryman was determined to enjoy.

"My first enquiry was for a bath. It would not be heated or lighted up till eight o'clock; at eight o'clock I went, and was surprised to find it so large and comfortable. I was not long surprised, however, for I found that no sooner was the sacred prohibition removed, than the Turks and Arabs began to pour in in throngs; they came without any respect of persons-the haughty Turk with his pipe-bearing slave, and the poor Arab boatman; in short, every one who could raise a few paras. "It was certainly not a very select company, nor over clean, and probably very few Europeans would have stood the thing as I did. My boatmen were all there. They were my servants, said the rais, and were bound to follow me every where. As I was a Frank, and, as such, expected to pay ten times as much as any one else, I had the best place in the bath, at the head of the great reservoir of hot water. My white skin made me a marked object among the swarthy figures lying around me; and half a dozen of the operatives, lank, bony fellows, and perfectly naked, came up and claimed me. They settled it among themselves, however, and gave the preference to a dried-up old man, more than sixty, a perfect living skeleton, who had been more than forty years a scrubber in the bath. He took me through the first process of rubbing with the glove and brush; and having thrown over me a copious ablution of warm water, left me to recover at leisure. I lay on the marble that formed the border of the reservoir, only two or three inches above the surface of the water, into which I put my hand and found it excessively hot; but the old man, satisfied with his exertion in rubbing me, sat on the edge of the reservoir, with his feet and legs hanging in the water, with every appearance of satisfaction. Presently he slid off into the water, and sinking up to his chin, remained so a moment, drew a long breath, and seemed to look around him with a feeling of comfort. I had hardly raised myself on my elbow to look at this phenomenon, before a fine brawny fellow, who had been lying for some time torpid by my side, rose slowly, slid off like a turtle, and continued sinking until he too had immersed himself up to his chin. I expressed to him my astonishment at his ability to endure such heat, but he told me that he was a boatman, had been ten days coming up from Cairo, and was almost frozen, and his only regret was that the water was not much hotter. He had hardly answered me before another and another followed, till all the dark naked figures around me had vanished. By the fitful glimmering of the little lamps, all that I could see was a parcel of shaved heads on the surface of the water, at rest, or turning slowly and quietly as on pivots. Most of them seemed to be enjoying it with an air of quiet dreamy satisfaction; but the man with whom I had spoken first,

seemed to be carried beyond the bounds of Mussulman gravity. It operated upon him like a good dinner; it made him loquacious, and he urged me to come in, nay, he even became frolicksome; and, making a heavy surge, threw a large body of the water over the marble on which I was lying. I almost screamed, and started up as if melted lead had been poured upon me; even while standing up, it seemed to blister the soles of my feet, and I was obliged to keep up a dancing movement, changing as fast as I could, to the astonishment of the dozing bathers, and the utter consternation of my would-be friend. Roused too much to relapse into the quiet luxury of perspiration, I went into another apartment, of a cooler temperature, where, after remaining in a bath of moderately warm water, I was wrapped up in hot cloth and towels, and conducted into the great chamber. Here I selected a couch, and, throwing myself upon it, gave myself up to the operators, who now took charge of me, and well did they sustain the high reputation of a Turkish bath : my arms were gently laid upon my breast, where the knee of a powerful man pressed upon them; my joints were cracked and pulled-back, arms, the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, all visited in succession. I had been shampooed at Smyrna, Constantinople, and Cairo ; but who would have thought of being carried to the seventh heaven at the little town of Minyeh? The men who had me in hand were perfect amateurs, enthusiasts, worthy of rubbing the hide of the sultan himself; and the pipe and coffee that followed were worthy too of that same mighty seigneur. The large room was dimly lighted, and turn which way I would, there was a naked body, apparently without a soul, lying torpid, and turned and tumbled at will by a couple of workmen. I had had some fears of the plague; and Paul, though he felt his fears gradually dispelled by the soothing process which he underwent also, to the last continued to keep particularly clear of touching any of them; but I left the bath a different man; all my moral as well as physical strength was roused. I no longer drooped or looked back; and, though the wind was still blowing a hurricane in my teeth, I was bent upon Thebes and the Cataracts." Vol. I. pp. 74–77.

He proceeded up the Nile-in due course, visited Thebes, the Quarries, the Cataracts-which, by the by, he found much less remarkable than they are generally represented to be-and the splendid temple of Philo. At Thebes, he had made acquaintance with two gentlemen, travellers like himself; and meeting them again farther up the river, and having previously received some civilities at their hands, he invited them to dine with him on board of his boat, inconsiderately it appeared, as his stores were found to be too scanty for such an invitation. How he got out of the scrape we will let himself narratemerely premising that he had a servant, Paul, an invaluable fellow, who was his constant and faithful companion in all his labours.

"After giving the invitation, I held a council with Paul, who told me that the thing was impossible, and with a prudence worthy of Caleb Balderstone, expressed his wonder that I had not worked an invitation out of them. I told him, however, that the thing was settled, and dine with me they must. My housekeeping had never been very extravagant, and macaroni, rice, and fowl had been my standing dishes. Paul

was pertinacious in raising objections, but I told him peremptorily there was no escape; that he must buy a cow or camel, if necessary, and left him scratching his head, and pondering over the task before him.

"In the hurried business of the day, I had entirely forgotten Paul and his perplexities. Once only, I remember, with a commendable prudence, I tried to get my companions to expend some of their force upon dried dates and Nubian bread, which they as maliciously declined, that they might do justice to me. Returning now, at the end of nine hours' hard work, crossing rivers, and rambling among ruins, the sharp exercise, and the grating of my teeth at the stubborn movements of my donkey, gave me an extraordinary voracity, and dinner, the all-important, never-to-beforgotten business of the day, the delight alike of the ploughman and philosopher, dinner, with its uncertain goodness, began to press upon the most tender sensibilities of my nature. My companions felt the vibrations of the same chord, and, with an unnecessary degree of circumstance, talked of the effect of air and exercise in sharpening the appetite, and the glorious satisfaction after a day's work of sitting down to a good dinner. I had perfect confidence in Paul's zeal and ability, but I began to have some misgivings. I felt a hungry devil within me, that roared as if he would never be satisfied. I looked at my companions, and heard them talk, and as I followed their humour with an hysteric laugh, I thought the genius of famine was at my heels, in the shape of two hungry Englishmen. I trembled for Paul, but the first glimpse I caught of him reassured me. He sat with his arms folded, on the deck of the boat, coolly, though with an air of conscious importance, looking out for us. Slowly and with dignity he came to assist us from our accursed asses; neither a smile nor frown was on his face, but there reigned an expression that you could not mistake. Reader, you have seen the countenance of a good man lighted up with the consciousness of having done a good action; even so was Paul's. I could read in his face a consciousness of having acted well his part. One might almost have dined on it. It said, as plainly as face could speak, one, two, three, four, five courses, and a dessert, or, as they say at the two-franc restaurants in Paris, Quatre plats, une demi-bouteille de vin, et pain à discrétion.

"In fact, the worthy butler of Ravenswood could not have stood in the hall of his master in the days of its glory, before thunder broke china and soured buttermilk, with more sober and conscious dignity than did Paul stand on the deck of my boat to receive us. A load was removed from my heart. I knew that my credit was saved, and I led the way with a proud step to my little cabin. Still I asked no questions, and made no apologies. I simply told my companions we were in Paul's hands, and he would do with us as seemed to him good. Another board had been added to my table, and my towel had been washed and dried during the day, and now lay, clean and of a rather reddish white, doing the duty of a table-cloth. I noticed two tumblers, knives and forks, and plates, which were strangers to me, but I said nothing; we seated ourselves and waited, nor did we wait long; soon we saw Paul coming towards us, staggering under the weight of his burden, the savoury odour of which preceded him. He entered and laid before us an Irish stew. Reader, did you ever eat an Irish stew? Gracious Heaven! I shall never forget that paragon of dishes; how often in the desert, among the mountains of Sinai, in the Holy Land, rambling along the valley of Jehoshaphat, or on the shores of the Dead Sea, how often has that Irish stew risen before me to tease and tantalize me, and haunt me with the memory of departed joys! The potato is a vegetable that does not grow in Egypt. I had not tasted one for more than a month, and was almost startled out of

my propriety at seeing them; but I held my peace, and was as solemn and dignified as Paul himself. Without much ceremony we threw ourselves with one accord upon the stew. I think I only do our party justice, when I say that few of those famished gentlemen from whose emerald isle it takes it name, could have shown more affection for the national dish. For my own part, as I did not know what was coming next, if any thing, I felt loth 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 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, that 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." 134-140.

Vol. I. pp.

At the site of the ancient Memphis he remained a short time, in order to visit some of the pyramids in the neighbourhood. One was particularly worthy of notice-that in which the sacred bird, Ibis, was deposited when dead. He succeeded in finding it, and gives an interesting account of his visit.

He takes his leave of Egypt with this reflection upon one of the prophecies:

"It is now more than three thousand years since the curse went forth against the land of Egypt. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman, the Arabian, the Georgian, the Circassian, and the Ottoman Turk, have successively trodden it down and trampled upon it; for thirty centuries the foot of a stranger has been upon the necks of her inhabitants; and in bidding farewell to this once favoured land, now lying in the most abject degradation and misery, groaning under the iron rod of a tyrant and a stranger, I cannot help recurring to the inspired words, the doom of prophecy: 'It shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more among the nations; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.' Vol. I. p. 204.

Having determined then to journey towards the East, and to visit Mount Sinai, and Edom, and passing through that country to traverse, also, the Holy Land, he made an arrangement with an Arabian sheik to conduct him safely on his way. His party started at the same time with the great caravan of the Mussulmans which sets out yearly from Cairo upon a pilgrimage which every devout follower of the prophet must, at least once in his life, make to his tomb. This caravan consists of more than thirty thousand pilgrims gathered from the distant Caspian, the extreme end of Persia, and the confines of Africa, and assembling at Cairo as a central point, winds its dreary way through the sands of the Desert. Fifty days is the ordinary length of the journey. The departure of the caravan, our author says, was well worth seeing:

"Accustomed as I was to associate the idea of order and decorum with the observance of all ites and duties of religion, I could not but feel surprised at the noise, tumult, and confusion, the strifes and battles of these pilgrim-travellers. If I had met them in the Desert after their line of march was formed, it would have been an imposing spectacle, and comparatively easy to describe; but here, as far as the eye could reach, they were scattered over the sandy plain, thirty thousand people, with probably twenty thousand camels and dromedaries, men, women, and children, beasts and baggage, all commingled in a confused mass that seemed hopelessly inextricable. Some had not yet struck their tents, some were making coffee, some smoking, some cooking, some eating, many shouting and cursing, others on their knees praying, and others, again, hurrying on to join the long moving stream that already extended several miles into the desert.

"It is a vulgar prejudice, the belief that women are not admitted into the heaven of Mahomed. It is true that the cunning prophet, in order