fear-all this presents such a contrast to the life we have left, and must soon return to, that we can scarcely believe in our own identity.

This sense of enjoyment only lasts for a season, however, and we were long enough upon the Nile to wear it out; the instinct of action, the force of habit, and Norman restlessness, soon returned. Long before our voyage was concluded, we pined for Europe and its working world, with all its wear and tear, and struggles and distractions.

At first, however, as I have observed, this life of indolence was very enjoyable. We read during the heat of the day; about sunset took a swim in the river; and then dined on such variety as Mahmoud's ingenuity could devise out of chickens, eggs, vegetables, and mutton. Beef is never seen in Egypt, since the late murrain, which carried off 240,000 head of cattle, or 320,000, as Mehemet Ali told a friend of mine. The mortality still continues, and every day we see carcases of oxen floating down the river,-apparently navigated by a crew of vultures, who seem to take to this sort of yachting with as much gusto as if they had been reared at Cowes.

At sunset, if there is no wind, we moor for the night alongside the bank, and then there is always time for a pleasant stroll by starlight, with good promise of adventure. Then coffee, pipes, books, and bed.

Thus we lived a pleasant week, and arrived at the prettiest city on the Nile, called Minyeh, the abode of the good Ebn Khasid, whose history forms an interesting episode in Lord Lindsay's "Letters."

Soon after leaving Minyeh, we arrived at a dangerous pass in the river, where the Arabian hills approach the banks, or rather frown over the river, in steep and menacing cliffs, at whose base the waters welter fearfully, and a storm is always howling. It was late when we approached them; our boat was reeling along under the pressure of enormous sails which we could not furl, as this process requires men to go aloft, and she staggered so much that they feared to venture. A lurid-looking moon peeped occasionally from behind some ragged clouds, as if to see how

we were getting on; and the wind grew wilder as we entered that gloomy ravine.

Picture to yourself, oh sofa-seated reader, a wild African glen, through which a mighty river is roaring, but its voice is drowned in the shriek of the blast, as, torn by the craggy cliffs, it flings itself on the foam-covered boat as on a victim. Now, a gust that has lost its way, comes rushing down, and taking the sails aback, buries the struggling bark up to her mainmast in the gurgling waters; now, another gust darting fiercely up the river, drives us madly and unmanageably towards the caverned cliffs. The Arabs stand stupefied, or reel with the staggering boat, and look fearfully up to the unfurlable sails that seem determined to drag us to destruction. They swore, and shrieked, and prepared to swim for it; we sat, and smoked, and wondered how it was to end.

At length, a very respectable storm, concentrated into one gust, came rushing by, took our sails as if they were set to it, buried our bows under water, and sent us spinning along on a wave of our own making, till it drove us clear out of the chasm; then, as if it had done its work, it went back to its home among those awful cliffs, where probably it is panting still. The Arabs say that a storm lives under this height of Abou Fadee, and it seems to keep a moon and clouds to match; for no sooner had we emerged into the open river than this same moon smiled blandly over us, and not a cloud was visible in the deep blue sky.

The next morning, we reached the village and factory of Rhoda, where is a sugar plantation of the Pasha's. Its superintendent is an intelligent and hospitable Irishman, a Mr. M'Pherson, who left the West Indies on the emancipation of the slaves, and who has been here ever since. The West Indian sugar-cane thrives here; its juice is expressed by two English steam-engines, and is refined afterwards by eggs alone-Islamism not allowing the use of blood. The consequence is that the sugar is of a very coarse quality, and it is only by an exercise of despotism that it attains the price of fourpence a pound at the factory. This is one of the Pasha's monopolies ; it occupies 300 laborers, who are all conscripts: they nominally receive a piastre a day (about two-pence halfpenny) for their labor; but

this is always a year in arrear, and, when paid, is paid half in kind.

Every boat ascending the Nile hoists the flag of the country to which its proprietor belongs. Besides this, each traveller, before leaving Cairo, adopts a private flag, and registers it at the hotels with his own name and that of his boat. Thus, every stranger, on arriving at Cairo, learns who is "up" the river, and for what flag to look.

I had been expecting for some days to meet an old friend, and, hearing that there was an English flag at Siout, we pushed on day and night, stimulating our crew by bribes, till we arrived at the little village of El Hamra. This is the port of Siout, which is the capital of Upper Egypt, and was the residence of Ibrahim Pasha when governor of the province.

CHAPTER XIX.

SIOUT THE CATACOMBS.

And there the bodies lay, age after age,

Mute, life-like, rounded, fresh, and undecaying,
Like those asleep in quiet hermitage,

With gentle sleep about their eyelids playing;
And living in their rest, beyond the rage

Of death or life: while Fate was still arraying,
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind,

And fleeting generations of mankind.

SHELLEY.

We found ourselves disappointed in the owner of the English flag at Siout; but, as our crew had stipulated to remain one day here to bake bread for the remainder of the voyage, we mounted donkeys, and, accompanied by Mahmoud and one of the crew carrying provisions, started for Siout. El Hamra, the little village at which our boat lay moored, besides being the port of the capital of the Said, or Upper Egypt, is remarkable for its shipbuilding propensities. There were six or seven vessels of various sizes on the stocks then: their knee-timbers formed of acacia wood, their scarfings of the sycamore-plane tree.

Siout is watered by a canal, and approached from the river by a road that runs along a causeway, under an avenue of planetrees, about a mile in length. The city itself possesses baths, bazaars, rope-walks, and a cotton-factory, a slave-market, and the best pipe-manufactory in the East; but, notwithstanding all these advantages, it is dirty, unpaved, and poverty-stricken. This is one of the great desert caravan stations, and therefore contains some spacious khans and other accommodations. I visited the slave-market, where the proprietor at first refused me admittance, but I understood enough of Arabic manners by

this time to pass him by unnoticed; whereupon, he attended me very civilly over his establishment. A brace of pistols in one's girdle, and a kurbash, or hippopotamus whip in one's hand, does more in the East towards the promotion of courtesy, good humor and good fellowship, than all the smiles and eloquence that ever were exerted. The slaves here looked miserable enough, jus arrived from Darfur, across the desert. The Jelab, or slavemerchant, had lost great numbers of them from hunger and fatigue, and said that those remaining would not repay him for his outlay.

Passing out of the city towards the mountains, we met numbers of women-slaves, washing and filling water-jars in the canal. They wore as little covering as Eve, but the eye soon becomes accustomed to this; dark people never look naked, at least to white ones.

After an hour's ride, we arrived at the foot of the steep bu terraced, calcareous hills, which formed a sort of vertical cemetery for the inhabitants of Lycopolis, the predecessor of Siout. Herein the piety of old dug tombs of the magnitude and fashion of temples: "For," said they, "those whom we bury now as mere men, when they are awakened, will be as Gods, and must not be ashamed of the places wherein they have lain so long." Wolves would also appear to have feelings on the subject, for numerous mummies of these brutes have been found as carefully preserved as those of their worshippers.

Our donkeys clambered actively up the sides of the crumbling mountain, and at length we stood on a platform in front of the wonderful Stabl d'Antar, commanding a view of about a hundred miles of the valley of the Nile. A vast level panorama, bounded by the chains of the Arabian and Libyan hills, lay spread before us, diversified with every shade of green, and watered by the Nile, creeping like a silvery serpent, through the green savannahs. This vast plain was intersected by numerous dykes, or canals, which regulate the inundation of the Nile; and, as these are generally planted with trees, they help to give character to the somewhat monotonous landscape. Here and there a few tents were pitched in a green meadow, in which horses grazed, but generally it was under agriculture of exube