were glaring upon mine. Instinctively I levelled my pistol at his fiendish countenance; but, just as my finger trembled on the trigger, I saw the boat was in the line, and, crowded as she was, though distant, the shot must have taken effect upon some sailor. So I scared the brute with a shout, and when I ran to the door, he had disappeared behind the rocks. The blood of the slaughtered ram was still steaming from the sands, and I supposed had attracted my unexpected visitor. This time I fastened the door of the tent, and slept as soundly as if I were not in the midst of a menagerie let loose. And here I may allude to the fact, that it requires some practice to find a lullaby in the serenades of jackals, hyænas, or even of wild dogs; to lie trustfully on sands that harbor scorpions, stinging beetles, and horned asps; and to be soothed with the murmurs of a stream, in which the crocodile wanders and the water-serpent wriggles.

There! flames forth the sun-shine of the tropics, flashing over the roseate granite cliffs, and the dew-diamonded palms, and the silvery river; the very desert smiles beneath that magical morning power; and all who have survived the night come forth rejoicing, from hovel and from palace, as if life were indeed a blessing, as well as a probation. The indefatigable Mahmoud had already unloaded the boat, preparatory to the ascent of the cataract; and by his provident arrangement a file of camels is moving down the narrow pathway, to transport the cargo to Philo, across the desert. Now the tent disappears, and leaves as little trace as the palaces that once occupied its site. Trunks, boxes, hen-coops, frying-pans, powder-magazines, and tables, are piled upon the kneeling camels. They growl a little to express those savage but servile feelings that pass for meekness and resignation in the eyes of the world, owing to their hypocritically resigned expression of countenance. Now, the black driver gives an angry shriek at them, which means, "Get up, you brute;" and there they go, majestically towering along, as if they were doing it all for show; while cocks are crowing on the top of them from the hen-coops, and Abdallah is grinning his teeth out, as he bestrides my saddle, surmounting a pile of kettles and coffee-pots.

The Rais of the Cataract, and the other river authorities, did

not make their appearance till towards noon. A report had reached the Pasha's ears that the poor people, who dwell among these rocks, had discovered some means to avert starvation by catching fish in weirs of the rudest kind, built among the rapids. Mehemet Ali, by return of post (which fortunately for the fishermen occupied six weeks), transmitted an order to tax these little fisheries; and the river chiefs were at this moment occupied in an interview with the tax-gatherer.

At length they arrived; three tall, spare, elderly men, with long beards and large turbans, and such cumbrous drapery that exertion seemed impossible to them. They squatted around us on the deck, and were followed by crowds of their acquaintance, who listened to the bargain, and did not scruple to express their sentiments of satisfaction, or otherwise, on anything that was said. The bargaining was carried on with vehement voices, amounting, at important passages, to screams and the most violent gesticulation: we, of course, held our peace; and Mahmoud and the chiefs, after an hour's debate, came to an agree ment on a price, which each was perfectly well aware of from the beginning. This amounted to the imposing sum of £2 10s., in consideration of which, we and our ship were to be dragged up the cataracts, and let safely down them on our return.

The wind was fair and strong. A new pilot, whom we were obliged to engage for the upper river, here took the place of our faithful Bacheet, as good a man in his way, black or Briton, as ever held a tiller. Our recruit called himself "The Hippopotamus," and a more grim, forbidding-looking negro I never beheld. His face was deeply marked with the small-pox, and frightfully seamed, moreover, with the explosion of gunpowder; he was about six feet and a half high, and his lean black limbs looked like those of a skeleton in mourning. Now, the moorings are loosed, the sails set to the northern breeze, Egypt recedes, and we glide into Ethiopia!

Colossal masses of granite, detached from the dark red cliffs that tower over us, lie strewn along the banks, and in the river. On our right, Elephantina nods all its palm-trees in farewell; on the left, the deserted city, with its rugged ruins topping the

jagged cliffs, till the distance blended into one the vast distorted masses that lay darkly relieved against the pale blue sky.

Our voyage for the next hour was very exciting and pic. turesque; the river, narrowed between the dark crags, here and there boiled into milk-white foam: sometimes a pyramid of nature-piled rocks towered from the desert-plain; and between it. and the barren hills, would for a moment smile some spot of vivid verdure, shadowed by acacias, or a palm-tree; sometimes the sandy valleys were of deep yellow, contrasted with the gloomy rocks whose shadow they received like water; sometimes these sandy tracts were silvery white, giving the impression of a snowy tract by moonlight. Then we shot past the beautiful little island of Shehayl, and entered upon more troubled waters.

The breeze was fair and fresh, and our bark breasted the torrent gallantly, flinging the foam from her bows on the black rocks as she struggled past; at the foot of the second rapid there was a space of calm water, over which she rushed, as if to charge the fall, but it was too strong for her: for a moment she recoiled, then fairly went about, and seemed driving furiously. and inevitably against an impending cliff, at whose base the waters weltered fearfully. One of the chiefs of the cataract had, until now, been seated tranquilly on the deck, but watched with a vivid eye every motion of the admirably steered boat. Now came his time. In a moment more we should have been a wreck against that rugged rock, when suddenly he started to his feet; his cumbrous-looking drapery fell from around him like a veil : one instant, an infirm old man seemed cowering at our feet; the next, a stalwart, sinewy form rose like magic from his place: one moment he stood motionless at the bow, then plunged fearlessly into the torrent-emerged upon the threatening rock, and received upon his naked shoulder a blow that might have felled a palmtree the very boat reeled from her collision with that iron man, who turned her aside with dexterous strength, and then she floated round into a quiet bay, and was at rest. The hero of a moment ago again looked like a bale of blue and white cotton lumbering the deck, except that he resumed his unextinguished pipe.

This was our first day's work. Leaving our boat at the foot

of the cataracts, we proceeded over land to Philo, where our encampment awaited us. It was only about two miles distant, yet never in my life have I seen scenery so wildly strange, and unreal, as that through which we passed. The general effect was one of awful grandeur and sternest solitude; yet, among those menacing cliffs that towered over and around us in the most distorted forms, lay spots of the softest beauty and richest verdure. These increased as we proceeded; and we entered a village of pretty cottages, overshadowed by palm-trees, that gave us the most agreeable surprise: they were as different from the squalid dwellings of Egypt as were their modest, yet unveiled women, from those of the Fellaheen.

Old women were sitting in the shade, occupied with some quiet labor; girls were employed amongst the enclosures; little children ran about us, with merry faces and laughing voices, begging us to buy their pebbles, or flowers, or bright green locusts. Some of the attitudes into which these little urchins threw themselves were very amusing: the boys, with one little foot advanced, and one hand upon the hip, looked about them haughtily and erect; the girls, with a timid air, that struggled with their merry eyes, wore an appearance of unconscious modesty that veiled their nakedness better than all the silks of Hindostan.

Then we came to Birbé, a sort of river-port for the Upper Nile, and passing through a gorge in the rocky-mountain, came suddenly and unexpectedly in view of PHILE! the most unearthly, strange, wild, beautiful spot I ever beheld. No dreamer of the mystical old times, when beauty, knowledge, and power were realized on earth, ever pictured to himself a scene of wilder grandeur and more perfect loveliness. All that I had read, or heard, or imagined of this wondrous scene, had left me unprepared for such a realization; and, if I add my own vain efforts at description to those that have preceded me, it is not in any hope of conveying a true impression to the reader. All round us towered up vast masses of gloomy rocks, piled one upon the other in the wildest confusion; some of them, as it were, skeletons of pyramids, others requiring only a few strokes of giant labor to form colossal statues that might have startled the Anakim. Here spreads a deep drift of silvery sand, fringed

by rich verdure, and purple blossoms; there, a grove of palms, intermingled with the flowering acacia; and then, through vistas of craggy cliffs and plumy foliage, gleams a calm blue lake, with the Sacred Island in the midst, green to the water's edge except where the walls of the old temple-city are reflected. Above those shrub-tangled and pillared banks were tall pyramids, columns airy, yet massive in their proportion; palms, and towers, and terraces. Beyond the island, the lake glimmers through the ruins, and the whole scene of peace and beauty is embosomed in a valley frowned over by a girdle of rugged mountains, all scathed, and dark and desolate.

There was an air of repose, and awe, and perfect calm over the whole region around, that suited well with the solemn purposes to which it was consecrated; and I found myself asseverating its unrivalled beauty with the most solemn oath of ancient times, "by Him who sleeps in Philo!" as if it were a solemn invocation still.

Our tent had been pitched upon the shores of the lake; the fire was blazing, the carpets were spread, and in a few minutes we were seated as tranquilly "at gaze on the mystic island, as if we had been at home-which, to do us justice, we felt ourselves to be pretty much in most places.

I wandered along the river for hours, by the light of a glorious moon, that shone as brightly over that island as when a thousand worshippers thronged those fanes to keep her festival: and then we read Isaiah's denunciations; and Ezekiel's prophecies found a voice, as they did a realization, among the desolations they had foretold.

We had been in active exertion since daylight, and it was past midnight when we lay down to rest; so profound was the repose of the party, that, although our servants slept close to the tent, and R.'s pallet was within a few feet of mine, none of them heard two shots which I fired at the wild dogs that came prowling into the tent. The early part of the night was quite illuminated by the comet, which spread its light from the zenith to the spot where the sun had set, as if it was composed of some stray rays of light which he had forgotten, and left behind him. Sunrise, the next morning, found us tramping through the