first time falls under the author's observation. Great is Allah and Mohammad his prophet for these new revelations. I am told," he continues, "that it is not uncommon in the mother country. It is there gregarious in its habits, and found in flocks in the thickets of Regent and Oxford streets, in the paddock of Pall Mall, and usually in any large herd of Bulls.

"Its horns are enormous and threatening, but very flexible and harmless. Its ears and tail are of uncommon length, but adroitly concealed, and it comes to luxuriant perfection in the southern parts of India, and in fact, wherever the old herds obtain a footing.

"It is very frisky and amusing, and delights to run at the spectator with its great horns branching. If he is panic-stricken and flies, the Bull pursues him roaring like a mighty lion, and with such energy, that the more ingenious naturalists suppose, that for the moment, the animal really fancies his horns to be hard and pointed, and serviceable. If, however, the spectator turns, and boldly takes the animal by the horns, they will bend quite down-in fact, with a little squeezing will entirely disappear, and the meek-faced Bull will roar you as gently as any sucking dove."

Be

Nor wonder at such figures in our Nile picture, for here are contrasts more profound, lights lighter and shadows more shaded, than in our better balanced West. lieve that you more truly feel the picturesqueness of that turban and that garb moving along the shore, because Verde Giovane's "wide-awake" and checked shooting

jacket are hard before us. We overhauled them one afternoon, and while Verde Giovane stood in a flat cap and his hands in the shooting-jacket's pocket, and told us that Nero was just ahead and in sight that morning, Gunning suddenly sprang upon deck, blew off his two barrels, laughed hysterically, and glaring full at us, we saw-O Dolland! that he had succumbed to blue spectacles.

XII.

Asquat.

Sherbet of ROSES in a fountained kiosk of Damascus can alone be more utterly oriental to the imagination and sense than the first interior view of many-minareted Asyoot.

Breathe here, and reflect that Asyoot is a squalid mud town, and perceiving that, and the other too, as you must needs do when you are there, believe in magic for

evermore.

Under Aboofeyda, from the dragoman of a Dahabieh whose Howadji were in the small boat shooting ducks and waking all the wild echoes of the cliffs, we had heard of Nero just ahead, again, and had left Verde and Gunning far behind. As the Ibis flew on with favoring gales, the river became more and more winding, and the minarets of Asyoot were near across the land, long before the river reached the port of the town. Rounding one of the points we descried two boats ahead, and we could at length distinguish the Italian tricolor of Nero. His companion bore an immensely blue pennant that floated in great bellying folds upon the wind, like a huge serpent. Suddenly we came

directly into the wind and threw the men ashore to track along a fine bank of acacias. This passed, we saw the blue pennant standing across into the reach of the stream that stretches straight to Asyoot, and a few moments after Nero emerged and strained canvas after, and we, piling in our men as soon as possible, drew round, with the wind upon our quarter, in hot pursuit. The Ibis had not time to win a victory so sure, for Nero's "Kid" frisked by the proud pennant, and mooring first to the bank, was quiet as the dozing donkeys on the shore, by the time that the Ibis touched the bank, and the Howadji landed under a salute of one gun from the Kid. Salutatory Nero had an arsenal on board, but in that hour, only one gun would go.

We were yet a mile or two from the town, which lies inland, and we took our way across the fields in which a few of the faithful stared sedately upon the green-vailed Nera, by whose side rode the Pacha,-Nero and I, and a running rabble of many colors, bringing up the rear. Herons floated snowily about the green, woodpeckers, sparrows, and birds of sunset plumage, darted and fluttered over the fields, deluged with the sunlight; and under a gate of Saracenic arch, heralded by the golden-sleeved Commander, we entered a cool shady square.

It was the court of the Pacha's palace, the chief entrance of the town. A low stone bench ran along the base of the glaring white walls of the houses upon the square, whose windows were screened by blinds, as dark as the walls were white, and sitting, and lounging upon this bench, groups of figures,-smoking, sipping coffee, ar

rayed in gorgeous stuffs-for there in sober sadness was the court circle, with the long beards flowing from the impassible dark faces,-gazed with serious sweet Arabian eyes upon the Howadji. The ground was a hard smooth clay floor, and an arcade of acacias on either hand, walled and arched with grateful cool green, the picturesque repose of the scene.

This was a small square, and faded upon the eye, forever daguerreotyped on the memory, as we passed over a bridge by a Shekh's tomb, a mound of white plaster, while under an arch between glaring white walls, stood a vailed woman with a high water jar upon her head.

Threading the town, which is built entirely of the dark mud brick, we emerged upon the plain between the houses and the mountains. Before us a funeral procession was moving to the tombs, and the shrill, melancholy cry of the wailers rang fitfully upon the low gusts that wailed more grievously, and for a sadder sorrow. We could not overtake the procession, but saw it disappear among the white domes of the cemetery, as we began to climb the hills to the caves-temples, I might say, for their tombs are temples who reverence the dead, and these were built with a temple grandeur by a race who honored the forms that life had honored, beyond the tradition or conception of any other people. Great truths, like the Gods, have no country or age, and over these ancient Egyptian portals might have been carved the saying of the modern German Novalis, the body of man is the temple of God.

These tombs of Stabl Antar, are chambers quarried in