They are all bad workers, and lazy exceedingly. Never was seen such confused imbecility of action and noise, as in the shifting of sail. The ropes are twisted and tangled, and the red and black legs are twisted and tangled in the trouble to extricate them. Meanwhile the boat comes into the wind, the great sails flap fiercely, mad to be deprived of it; the boats that had drifted behind come up, even pass, and the Pacha, wrapped in his capote, swears a little to ease his mind.

Yet that Nile poet, Harriet Martineau, speaks of the "savage faculty" in Egypt. But "faculty" is a Western gift. Savages with faculty may become a leading race. But a leading race never degenerates, so long as faculty remains. The Egyptians and Easterns are not savages, they are imbeciles. It is the English fashion to laud the Orient, and to prophesy a renewed grandeur, as if the East could ever again be as bright as at sunrise. The Easterns are picturesque and handsome, as is no nation with faculty. The coarse costume of a Nile sailor shames in dignity and grace the most elaborate toilet of Western saloons. It is drapery whose grace all men admire, and which all artists study in the antique. Western life is clean and comely and comfortable, but it is not picturesque.

Therefore, if you would enjoy the land, you must be a poet, and not a philosopher. To the hurrying Howadji, the prominent interest is the picturesque one. For any other purpose, he need not be there. Be a pilgrim of beauty and not of morals or of politics, if you would realize your dream. History sheds moonlight over the an

C

tique years of Egypt, and by that light you can not study. Believe before you begin, that the great Asian mystery which D'Israeli's mild-minded Tancred sought to penetrate, is the mystery of death.

If you do not, then settle

it upon the data you have at home, for unless you come able and prepared for profoundest research and observation, a rapid journey through a land whose manners and language you do not understand, and whose spirit is utterly novel to you, will ill qualify you to discourse of its fate and position.

That the East will never regenerate itself, cotemporary history shows; nor has any nation of history culminated twice. The spent summer reblooms no more-the Indian summer is but a memory and a delusion. The sole hope of the East is Western inoculation. The child must suckle the age of the parent, and even "Medea's wondrous alchemy" will not restore its peculiar prime. If the East awakens, it will be no longer in the turban and red slippers, but in hat and boots. The West is the sea that advances forever upon the shore, the shore can not stay it, but becomes the bottom of the ocean. The Westwho lives in the Orient, does not assume the kaftan and the baggy breeches, and those of his Muslim neighbors shrink and disappear before his coat and pantaloons. The Turkish army is clothed like the armies of Europe. The grand Turk himself, Mohammad's vicar, the Commander of the Faithful, has laid away the magnificence of Haroun Alrashid, and wears the simple red Tarboosh, and a stiff suit of military blue. Cairo is an English sta

ern,

tion to India, and the Howadji does not drink sherbet upon the pyramids, but champagne. The choice Cairo of our Eastern imagination is contaminated with carriages. They are showing the secrets of the streets to the sun. Their silence is no longer murmurous, but rattling. The Uzbeekeeyah, public promenade of Cairo, is a tea garden, of a Sunday afternoon crowded with ungainly Franks, listening to bad music. Ichabod, Ichabod! steam has towed the Mediterranean up the Nile to Boulak, and as you move on to Cairo, through the still surviving masquerade of the Orient, the cry of the melon-merchant seems the significant cry of each sad-eyed Oriental, "Consoler of the embarrassed, O Pips!"

The century has seen the failure of the Eastern experiment, headed as it is not likely to be headed again, by an able and wise leader. Mohammad Alee had mastered Egypt and Syria, and was mounting the steps of the sultan's throne. Then he would have marched to Bagdad, and sat down in Haroun Alrashid's seat, to draw again broader and more deeply the lines of the old Eastern empire. But the West would not suffer it. Even had it done so, the world of Mohammad Alee would have crumbled to chaos again when he died, for it existed only by his imperial will, and not by the perception of the people.

At this moment the East is the El Dorado of European political hope. No single power dares to grasp it, but at last England and Russia will meet there, face to face, and the lion and the polar bear will shiver the desert silence with the roar of their struggle. It will be the re

turn of the children to claim the birthplace. They may quarrel among themselves, but whoever wins, will introduce the life of the children and not of the parent. A possession and a province it may be, but no more an independent empire. Father Ishmael shall be a sheikh of honor, but of dominion no longer, and sit turbaned in the chimney corner, while his hatted heirs rule the house. The children will cluster around him, fascinated with his beautiful traditions, and curiously compare their little black shoes with his red slippers.

Here, then, we throw overboard from the Ibis all solemn speculation, reserving only for ballast this chapter of erudite Eastern reflection and prophecy. The shade of the Poet Martineau moves awfully along these clay terraces, and pauses minatory under the palms, declaring that "He who derives from his travels nothing but picturesque and amusing impressions * uses like a child, a most serious and manlike privilege."

*

It is reproving, but some can paint, and some can preach, Poet Harriet, so runs the world away. That group of palms waving feathery in the moonlight over the gleaming river is more soul-solacing than much conclusive speculation.

VI.

The Ibis Flies.

AT noon the wind rose. The Ibis shook out her wings, spread them and stood into the stream. Nero was already off.

Stretching before us southward were endless groups of masts and sails. Palms fringed the western shore, and on the east, rose the handsome summer palaces of Pachas and rich men. They were deep retired in full foliaged groves and gardens, or rose white and shining directly over the water. The verandahs were shaded with cool, dark-green blinds, and spacious steps descended stately to the water, as proudly as from Venetian palaces. Graceful boats lay moored to the marge, the lustrous darkness of acacias shadowed the shore, and an occasional sakia or water-wheel began the monotonous music of the river.

Behind us from the city, rose the alabaster minarets of the citadel Mosque-snow spires in the deep blue-and the aerial elegance of the minor minarets mingling with palms, that seemed to grow in unknown hanging-gardens of delight, were already a graceful arabesque upon the