Notes from Egypt

Dear E

I left Cairo for Suez about eleven a.m. June 24th on a donkey, accompanied by its Arab owner on foot, to whoni I paid on my return to Cairo one hundred piastres or one pound sterling, the distance to Suez and back being one hundred and sixty eight miles: the agreement was, that if I remained above three days in Suez , I was to allow a further sum of five piastres a day for the keep of man and steed.

It was a lovely morning, cloudless, with a fine breeze from the north, and although so near noon, and at the summer solstice, the heat quite moderate. The road for the first few miles out of Cairo is excellent, like an English highway, and is planted with young Lebbek trees (Acacia Lebbek). I stopped to enter and admire the beautiful tomb of Malek Adel, which stands at, a short distance from the road-side. The dome is beautifully wrought without, and within most elaborately sculptured and painted, in the usual mixed style of tasteful though barbaric decoration.

The views on this side of Cairo are very pleasing, but you quickly leave all cultivation and haunts of men behind, and enter on the desert, upon which, on the whole way to Suez , there is not a single town, village, or even hamlet; but there are station-houses of the Transit Company, at a distance of about five to seven miles apart. Of these there are twelve between Cairo and Suez . They are in fact hotels for the accommodation of passengers going to, and coming from India, and for relays of horses for the omnibuses that convey them across the desert. These station-houses are ugly stone buildings, with no uniformity in size or design; some of them are walled round, and on the opposite side of the road are a range of stone or wooden stables, usually, like the houses, whitewashed. Within, the station-houses are comfortably enough fitted up, and are kept extremely clean and neat. The dining-rooms are very spacious, and airy, with divans, chairs, and mirrors, and the windows have good curtains to exclude the sun and wind. The sleeping-rooms are airy, with excellent iron bedsteads, and beds thereon, with musquito curtains in good order; although on the dry waterless desert, this most odious plague of warm climates is seldom experienced: the few musquitoes found, being generated in the water brought for the supply of the stations from Cairo or Suez , as I found their larvge in plenty in my water jug. The articles supplied at the stations are mostly from England, as butter, cheese, ale, &c. and it is hardly necessary to add that the charges are genuine English also. These stations are not unconditionally open to the traveller going to and from Cairo and Suez : it is necessary to take a " Station ticket" at either of those places before setting out, to be able to enter for sleep or refreshment. This ticket for which you pay the Transit Company £ 1, gives merely the right of entry, and nothing more; you can stop and sleep on the divan in the saloon as long as you please, but must pay for a bed, and any refreshment you call for, according to the printed tariff hung up in the dining-room. An excellent arrangement in these houses, at least in some, if not all, is that of having a medicine chest, with a list of the articles it contains, for the relief of invalid passengers, or those taken suddenly ill. The attendants are Arabs, who speak a little English; the superintendent is either a Turk, or European (Italian or Maltese,) and I met with the greatest civility and attention along the road; the loneliness of which is only relieved occasionally by a party of desert Arabs, or a string of the colossal breed of camels, that carry merchandise between Cairo and the Red Sea. With the exception of a solitary miserable looking acacia, held in great respect by pilgrims to and from Mekkeh, and hung with votive offerings of rags, which do not improve its appearance, there is not a tree between Cairo and Suez ; but the ground is bedecked here and there, with low shrubby plants, a foot or two high, such as the fierce heat of summer is unable wholly to burn up; and of these, a species of henbane (Hyoscyamus Datura) is the most conspicuous and abundant. I have collected plenty of its seeds for the garden at Kew, and at St. John's, where I have no doubt it will flourish well in the open air, if slightly covered in winter; for I fancy by the look, that the plant is biennial. Of sweet scented and aromatic plants, there are very few found wild in Egypt, nothing like so many as our own woods and fields spontaneously produce; but in this desert, the pretty Santolina fragrantissima grew in abundance, and quite delighted me with its refreshing scent, being then in full bloom. The glare from the white and yellow naked soil of sand and powdered limestone, of which last the Mokattan chain of hills, which accompanied me in the distance on the right, is composed, was perfectly dazzling in conjunction with the floods of light poured down by the noontide sun, now all but vertical, in a perfectly cloudless sky; but the strong, steady, cool, north-west breeze kept the temperature down to 90° — 95°, and towards evening, it was sure to be from ten to fifteen degrees lower; so I gaily pursued my way, regardless of the glare, and with no other drawback to the enjoyment of the ride, than an occasional whirlwind of fine dust. In this way, I jogged on till I reached No. 4 Station, about 6 p.m., where I stopped and had dinner; and having remained a sufficient time to rest the man and donkey, I started again and travelled all night till four o'clock the next morning, when I reached No. 8 Station distant from Cairo 39 miles. Certain unpleasant jolts from time to time, during the day made me suspect that the donkey was falling lame, and it proved upon examination that he had lost a hind shoe which left the foot exposed at every step to contact with the sharp stones and gravel, which, with deep soft sand, alternately compose the surface soil of the desert. In this country horses and donkeys are shod with a plate of iron that covers the whole under side of the foot, no part of which consequently is accustomed to touch the ground; hence, an animal that has lost a shoe, is in the predicament of any one of ourselves similarly situated, and of course must suffer much from being forced to go bare footed over a stony road. There was however nothing to be done, as the donkey could not be shod at the stations, nor even, its owner assured me at Suez . This unlucky accident caused considerable delay from this time till my return to Cairo, as the poor donkey could only proceed at a walking pace, and evidently suffered great uneasiness; although we endeavoured to mitigate it by binding a cloth several times folded on the hoof, so as to interpose a soft cushion between the foot and the hard ground.

This night-travelling alone on the desert, was, I must confess, very dreary work; I could not talk with my Arab companion, and at last got tired even of my own musings, having no external objects to divert my attention. Occasionally a party of desert Arabs would pass by, and give the salaam; and in the earlier part of the night we met many strings of huge camels going with their loads of Arabian produce to Cairo. These enormous quadrupeds, some of which will stand nine feet high, to the top of the hump, would suddenly, as in a moment, be seen looming like distant hills or rocks across the dim dubious starlight, and the next instant be almost upon us; their measured, noiseless tread not betraying their approach: they were quite invisible to my eyes at least, at the distance of a dozen yards, and it required some vigilance to keep out of their way, as such apathetic living machines will step aside for nobody. Another singular effect of the gloom was to produce the appearance of continual rising ground in front of us; we seemed ever about to ascend a steep bank across our track, which last, would appear as if furrowed with deep ruts, or full of holes and inequalities of all kinds: whereas, we were traversing a perfect level on every side, over ground comparatively quite smooth and even. Sometimes, the track, which was chiefly marked by the feet of camels and other beasts of burden, and here and there, by the wheels of the Transit carriages, would become so faintly perceptible in the twilight, as almost to baffle the sagacity of my Arab donkey-man, who however, was never long at fault. The distance between the station houses seemed interminable, and as they were invisible to within a very short distance, our approach to one was notified to us by the barking of the dogs, that even here, as everywhere else in Egypt, are permitted as hangers on to the establishment, and are tolerated, rather than adopted, dwellers on the premises. To heighten the dreariness of our solitude, we ever and anon passed the skeleton, or half consumed remains of a defunct camel, the victim of fatigue or starvation, under which hundreds sink yearly in most of the African deserts. The poor donkey too, towards morning became so lame that I got off and walked as the moon rose, and at four a.m. an hour before sun-rise, I was not sorry to enter No. 8 Station, where I remained till half-past two p.m. and made a short day's journey; being quite sick of night travelling without one fellow creature who could understand me to speak to. I halted at No. 12 Station for the night at nine p.m. at which, as at No. 8., the accommodations are excellent. Left No. 12 next day {June 26th) at eleven a.m. and reached Suez at sun-set, thus accomplishing the distance from Cairo of eighty-four miles, in three short days of travelling, with ease and pleasure. This last day was extraordinarily cool and agreeable, so that 1 could travel under a nearly vertical and perfectly unclouded sun, with as little feeling of heat, as on a bright summer's day in England, or with even less, — such is the result of the evaporating power of the constant north wind, which allows no moisture to remain on the surface to obstruct the pores, but carries off the cutaneous exhalations as fast as they are poured out, and acting by its coolness at the same time, as a j tonic, neutralizes the debilitating influence of direct I exposure to the sun.

The mirage was very strong on the desert this day, I and had 1 not known that it was still distant, I might I have taken this wonderfully illusive phenomenon for a I first glimpse of the Red Sea; the Turkish fortress of | El Azerood, which seems set there to guard nothing, I appeared to have its walls washed by an arm of some j sea or lake. At length however, the real Red Sea became visible, as a line of dark blue in the southern ;! quarter, between the mountains of Asia on the east, and I the lower range of hills on the African side; and I could ] distinguish the Hon. E. I. Go's steam ship Akbar lying at anchor in the offing.

The Suez desert is tame in comparison with the savage grandeur of the southern ones of Nubia and Ethiopia, but is not without picturesque features in the limestone hills that range the whole distance from Cairo on the traveller's right. The approach to Suez is rather striking from the fine expanse of sea, bounded by hills, which it presents. About two miles from the town you pass Beer Suez , a deep well of clear but brackish water, where we stopped to give the donkey drink. Suez is supplied by a spring at some distance, from whence sweet water is brought in skins by camels.

The town of Suez is a wretched, filthy place, and a few years ago was nearly depopulated by the cholera. The dilapidation here exceeds that of any place I have seen in the East, whilst its future prospects are brighter than those of perhaps any other in this part of the world; for if the railway from Alexandria to Cairo be completed, of which there is now I believe no doubt, and the line be carried on, as it most assuredly will be, to Suez , the latter must rise with the rapidity of a meteor into importance, as just at present it is beginning slowly to do. With the exception of the hotel (a good and well-conducted branch establishment of Mr. Sheppard of Cairo), the post office, and two or three indifferent residences of officials connected with the Transit Company's concerns, there is not a house in Suez that does not seem dropping to pieces, and ready to fall whilst the spectator is looking at it. How such crazy tenements of stone and wood hold together at all; and, still more, how any people can be foolhardy enough to inhabit them, surpasses my comprehension.

The hotel I found extremely cool and airy, the wind, blowing through every room, made the climate like that of a summer's evening at home, nor were there any mosquitoes, to whom a brisk wind is an abomination, if not a destroyer.

The next morning I started in a boat for the Akbar, lying a mile or two from the town, where the water is too shallow for any but small craft to come up. The Akbar is an old vessel, and somewhat shaky from hard service on her accustomed station between Suez and Bombay during the monsoons: so she now lays up in harbour in that season, and runs during the fine months only. I was very obligingly received on board, and invited to sleep there that night, an invitation which to my regret I incautiously accepted. The sleeping berths I was informed I should find untenantable from heat and cockroaches, so they made me a shakedown on the floor between decks, rather too close to the breezy vicinity of a gangway and windsail to be quite agreeable: then at daybreak I was roused up from slumber sweet, oy Liie lepuib ui d pou.nu.er just oveiiiedu i iut5 uiui n ing gun), after which, there was no peace or rest for the sole of the foot, for it happened to be Saturday, and all hands were up betimes, turning everyone out of his roosting-place, and inundating the deck with a deluge of Red-Sea water. So, having breakfasted on board, I took my leave with all convenient speed, not at all in love with the nautical arrangements of the Akbar, though grateful for the kindness and hospitality shewn me by the officers.

The part of the Red Sea, or of the Gulf of Suez through which the children of Israel miraculously passed, is a matter of much controversy. Sir G. Wilkinson thinks the passage was effected at the fording immediately to the eastward of the town, and of which there is an excellent view from the hotel window. There is no doubt that the sea formerly extended higher up the isthmus than at present, since recent shells are found in the soil above high-water mark; therefore at the time of the passage, it by no means follows that (supposing this to have been the site of that event), the part of the sea miraculously divided, was of its present narrow dimensions and shallowness. Others think that the passage was accomplished considerably below, or to the southward of the modern Suez ; but the most direct road of the children of Israel from the land of Goshen where was their chief residence, — or from Zoan, where one must infer that many of them were kept in bondage . to hard labour in making bricks, — into Canaan, was directly round or across the head of the Red Sea, or as it is now called, the Gulf of Suez . A still nearer way would have been by the coast desert, nearly in the present line of caravans from Cairo to Jerusalem, by El Arish and Gaza: but we are distinctly told, Exod. xiii. 17, 18, that " God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and not through the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said; lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return into Egypt." Now, the purposed overthrow of Pharoah's host in the Eed Sea, might be as perfectly effected on that part of the Gulf on which modern Suez stands, as at any other point below that town, and particularly at an epoch when the head of the Gulf advanced further to the northward than at the present time, and the waters were both wider and deeper. God's purpose in leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea, was to get him u honour upon Pharoah and all his host," not to aid their escape out of Egypt, which would only have been delayed in proportion as their course was in a direction south of east. At the same time, the nearest route (in a direction north of east, through the country of the Philistines), was to be avoided, that the people might " not see war." Is it not therefore consonant with reason, that the children of Israel should be led forth out of Egypt by the most direct path they could take consistently with the fulfilment of the two conditions required, the avoidance of an enemy's territory, and the destruction of Pharoah's army of pursuit. The division of the waters by a strong east windy and the expression that they were as " a wall " on either hand, together with the short time occupied in the passage, seem to indicate that this was effected in a part of the Gulf both narrow and shallow: a very few feet in depth being it is quite clear, sufficient to overwhelm the chariots and horses of Pharoah beyond the possibility of extricating themselves from the heavy tumbling sea, which the coming together of the divided waters would occasion.

Sir Gardner Wilkinson has I think made out a very good case in favour of the ford close to Suez on the east, having been the place of the Israelites' passage: Arab tradition is on his side, as well as the opinion of Dr. Robinson, and other learned travellers; he remarks, moreover, very justly, that were the water even at the time of the passage no deeper than in our own, the tide which still rises five or six feet, and was in Pharoah's days perhaps still higher, would have been a powerful means of the destruction of his army on the sudden return of the Sea to its strength. See Hand-book for Egypt, p. 209-210, passim.

Just out of Suez to the northward, is a vast and high mound, indicating, it is said, the site of the ancient Klysma or Clysma, called by the Arabs Kobziin, a word signifying destruction, and which has been given, Sir G. Wilkinson tells us, to all this part of the Red Sea (Gulf of Suez ) and the adjacent mountains, in allusion, he thinks, to the destruction of Pharoah's host.

Along the sand-banks that skirt the shore on the west side of Suez , I found great quantities of blue, green, and red coloured glass, mixed with the common red pottery one finds so abundantly composing the soil and rubbish of every ancient town in Egypt. This glass unquestionably is very ancient, as no manufactory of the kind exists at Suez or elsewhere, and the fragments are so plentifully dispersed in the sand, that a handful of them may be gathered in a few minutes without trouble. The colour of the glass is good, and some of the pieces are through decomposition beautifully iridescent. Dr. Abbott, to whom I shewed them, is of opinion that they are of Greek or Roman origin, and not the produce of ancient Egyptian industry. Amongst these fragments I picked up the neck of a small bottle; but with such genuine relics of antiquity, are now beginning to be mixed the broken remains of far more modern vessels, that were but the other day the cherished recipients of Bass's pale ale, port, sherry, claret, or some more vulgar beverage of Anglo-Indian consumption.

Suez was nearly depopulated a year or two ago, as I remarked before, by the cholera; more than half the inhabitants having been carried olF by it; the place itself is however extremely healthy. The country around is a dreary treeless waste, without cultivation: but the fine view over the Red Sea, and the mountain range on either side of the Gulf, redeem the landscape from tameness, and indeed render it sufficiently picturesque.

A few miles from Suez is a place called Ain Moussa, or Moses' Springs, where the Consul, and other European residents have a summer retreat; but this I did not visit, as it has no certain historical interest, and is only a comparatively greener spot than the surrounding country, enjoying a supply of wholesome water. Neither did I visit the Bitter Lakes, some distance to the northward of Suez : they being only small bodies of salt water in the desert, the appearance of which I could readily imagine from the saline impregnation of the soil close to the town, and from those I had seen in Egypt. So full of salt is the ground just outside Suez , that the encrustations left by the evaporation of the rain water-pools and plashes, look exactly like the half thawed spongy ice one sees in similar shallow pools and puddles during winter in England. You may here pick up large pieces of pure salt in crystals of considerable size and regularity.

Remaining two clear days at Suez , I reached Cairo again on the 1st of July, by the same route and conveyance I had taken from thence to Suez . The first day of my return journey was extremely hot, and the wind came like a blast from a furnace, as I trotted along over the burning sand. The mirage was extremely distinct and frequent, filling the distant landscape with a succession of phantom lakes, which mocked the eye with the most perfect resemblance of reality, as they lay shining and undulating in the thin blue haze. The smallest hollow or depression in the surface of the desert, although of only a few yards diameter, seen through the mirage, appears to be filled with water, or, as it were, a little pool: a poor sick child, whom its father was conveying across the desert, could by no argument be convinced that it was not water that was thus shining cool and clear before its longing eyes.

On the 12th of June, Mr. Page and myself made an excursion to the stone quarries of Toorah (the Troici lapidis mons, of the ancients, from whence were brought the materials for the pyramids), and to the pyramids of Saccareh and mounds of Memphis, near which, at Mitrahenny, lies the colossal statue of Eemeses II. It was arranged that we should go down the river in one of Mr. Page's boats, whilst two donkey-boys were to proceed without delay to Toorah and meet the boat there, in order that we might reach the quarries in good time to examine them sufficiently; but the boys thought fit not to make their appearance, or they probably got a fare nearer home, and with less trouble. The fact is, that no dependence can be placed on the word or actions of Arabs, they will break a promise or an appointment without scruple if it serves their purpose, or if they can gain a few fuddahs or paras more by their breach of faith. Falsehood, and excessive cupidity are the leading vices of the Arabs of Egypt, which, with their extreme self-will, make it very difficult to manage them, and irksome to employ them in any matter however trifling. Dishonesty, at least, as shewn in continual endeavours to over-reach, if not by actual purloining, is another sad trait in their character, to which their avarice or (as perhaps the phrenologist would say) their organs of acquisitiveness impel them. The Nubians are thought to be more honest, and less mendacious than the Egyptians, but even they cannot be trusted, as I have learned by continual experience. The same fraudulent dealing is practised by them towards one another, as well as towards strangers, and the result is, a mutual distrust and suspicion, which is sometimes quite amusingly displayed. An Arab for instance, will often ask for his baksheesh or reward before the stipulated service is rendered, or even commenced, or he will at all events be continually reminding you of your having promised it; so fearful is he, that when his part of the contract is performed, you will fail in the fulfilment of your own, or give him less than he bargained for originally. Their avarice and distrustful disposition, cause the Arabs to be very hard at driving a bargain; and for haggling about the value of a para more or less, no people on earth can equal them. Having no idea of the value of time themselves, they cannot comprehend how others should; and the purchase of the smallest trifle in the bazaars or private shops cannot be effected without an expenditure of time greater than would be consumed in an English transaction, in the transfer of goods to the amount of hundreds of pounds. Much may be urged, however, in extenuation of Arab rapacity and want of truth: as for instance the extreme poverty of the mass of the people, to whom a a few piastres is a little fortune; and then the wretched state of confusion and complexity of the Egyptian currency, which is of nearly fifty different denominations, and in value continually fluctuating, so that the most expert accountant is often at a loss to know the present worth of the native or foreign silver or gold coin that passes current in the country, varying as it does from day to day according to the exchange, or the decree of a corrupt government, which will only receive certain coin in payment of taxes or other dues, at a less value than the same bears in the market. The difficulty of knowing the multifarious coins that find their way into his purse, is one of the serious annoyances of the traveller in Egypt, and opens a door to fraud in every shape. Some of the silver coins of less value are actually of larger size than their superiors in value: this is also the case with the gold spangles that represent a ridiculously small sum, in, of course, a very debased standard, and which are wholly superfluous; as silver coins of the same denomination, or nearly so, are circulating at the same time, and that medium is a much more convenient one. Many of the coins of both metals have been clipped or punched by the Jews, so that few will receive them at their full value, and the reduction is made dependent on the caprice of the receiver. Money is so scarce, that it is extremely difficult to get change for even a Mejeedie dollar of nineteen piastres, unless its value has been taken in goods; and it is only in the larger towns that change for so trifling a sum can be obtained at all: in a village or small town, the possession of large money is as inconvenient as having none. An instance in illustration of this, has just occurred to me in Damietta (July 24th). Having broken the glass of my watch, I went to the shop of a European watchmaker (a (jrreek) to nave a new one put m: the price charged for a very good fiat glass of English or French manufacture, was half a Mejeedie dollar or nine and a half piastres. Having no small change, I offered the watchmaker one of these coins, but even so respectable a tradesman was unable to give me the difference: so shutting up his shop, and locking the door, I was kept waiting in the street till his return from some accommodating fellow-tradesman with more ready money than himself in the till, who could furnish the change required, the value of which was about one shilling and eightpence sterling. The same thing has repeatedly happened to me in the crowded and well stocked bazaars of the Egyptian metropolis itself, it is easier to get change for a £ 20 note in England than for a dollar in Egypt. Every piece of money received in payment in this country is scrutinized with a most suspicious eye, and often objected to from having a small hole punched in it, or the mark of a file on its edge &c.; the only coin that never causes any trouble to the buyer, or demur on the side of the purchaser, is the little five fuddah piece ( of copper ) eight of which make a piastre: the para is the Turkish word for the Egyptain fuddah. It is absolutely necessary on a journey to be furnished with a sufficient supply of five fuddah pieces, to pay for such trifling but necessary articles as milk, eggs, fowls, fruit, and bread, none of which can be had from the peasantry, cr in the small provincial towns unless paid for in the lowest denomination of coin, or at most, in half piastre silver pieces of twenty fuddahs; but these last, if offered in payment to a countryman, he would be unable to change, or at least pretend to be so. Marketing and shopping are consequently in Egypt, the occupation of half a clay, and an affair of interminable haggling, wrangling, and disputing, the combined results of the over-reaching and dishonest character of the sellers, and too often of their customers, as well as of the natural distrust between both, and of the scarcity, complexity, and debased quality of the coinage, against which, a people naturally avaricious, and extremely poor, are always on their guard. In the upper country, as the Thebaid, Nubia, &c, money is so scarce, that very little of greater value than the five fuddah piece, is to be met with in circulation, excepting in the larger towns; most marketing transactions are carried on by barter, or partly by exchange, partly in money of the above low denomination. Coin, of a higher value, is not understood, and when tendered in payment, in general is flatly refused, and if the supply of small change is exhausted, there is no chance left of procuring the necessaries of life. But to return to our trip^down the river. From the donkeys not arriving at Toorah, we were obliged to set out for the quarries on foot, and reached them a short time only before sun-set The ancient excavations are being fast destroyed by modern ones, the limestone is used for building and for mortar, at Cairo, &c.: their interest lies in having furnished the stone for the pyramids of Gheezeh, Saccareh &c.; and in exhibiting the way in which the blocks were cut out from the solid rock, which is the same with that of the Theban mountains, of which the Mokattan range behind Cairo is only a continuation.

The next day we set off on our donkeys for the mounds at Memphis, and the pyramids of Saccareh on the opposite side of the river. I forgot to mention, that on our way to Tooreh the day before, we stopped at Gheezeh to visit one of the chicken hatching establishments so celebrated of old; the ovens are dark, dirty holes, and on account of the advanced season, the number of eggs in the process of hatching was small.

The mounds of Memphis, at the modern village of Mitrahenny, are of great height and extent, with huge fragments of brick substructions jutting out from the heaps of rubbish, but only a few memorials of art exist: such as the colossal, but now prostrate and broken statue of Remeses II, the supposed Sesostris, and two or thre other statues of minor importance. The former was, it seems, presented by its discoverer to the British Museum, but our government has not availed itself of the gift, on account probably, of the great expense which must attend its removal. It is now not worth taking away, for of the features, which a few years ago were, as Sir Gr. Wilkinson states, in perfect preservation, and very beautiful, we could not make out a trace, so mutilated is the face by the Arabs. Continuing our ride through richly cultivated fields, and groves of date trees, we soon arrived at the village of Saccareh on the edge of the desert, over which we had to go for some distance further: the great pyramid standing in solitary majesty on a ridge of the desert, between which and the cultivated land at Saccareh are vast mounds of earth filled with human bones: I picked up many perfect sculls. This spot marks I believe the site of the Necropolis of Memphis. The day, as almost every day in Egypt, has been beautifully fine, with the never failing north wind blowing so fresh, that though fully exposed at the summer solstice to an all but vertical sun, on intensely heated sand, not one of us found the temperature oppressive.

From the ridge, on which the great pyramid of Saccareh (for there are several smaller ones) stands, you have a fine view of the Valley of the Nile, and of the entire chain of pyramids, of which, those of Saccareh occupy the centre, leaving the pyramids of Gheezeh and Abousheer to the northward, and those of Dashoor, about the same distance to the southward: the second, and last of these groups I have not visited, being contented with the good view I had of them from a moderate distance, aided by the telescope. Indeed these celebrated structures, although so smooth and symmetrical when seen from afar, are rough, unsightly objects when approached; and of all sight-seeing, that of pyramids, to one who is not an antiquary, is the most wearisome, and monotonous. Yiew these strange masses of stone as long as I may, I cannot bring myself to see any thing really wonderful or worthy of admiration about them: their vast bulk is their only merit, such as it is. The real wonders of Egypt, are her marvellous river, her colossal statues, and her vast sculptured temples.

The great pyramid of Saccareh is built in stages or degrees, and is much inferior in size to the two chief pyramids of Gheezeh, but it is still very large; and like them, a very dilapidated affair when you are close to it. In common with its neighbours, it is built of sandstone, cased externally with limestone, both, very soft and pliable, and the mortar that unites them is equally so; although it is the fashion to talk of the cements of the ancients as possessing a durability, which degenerate moderns are unable to equal. The base of this pyramid is undermined on one of its sides, by time or violence, and overhangs the foundation considerably. The ascent to the summit is very arduous and fatiguing, and I did not attempt it, but I regret not having been able to enter this pyramid, the main chamber in which has wooden rafters; but the drift sand of the desert had closed the entrance, which it is constantly doing, and requires to be removed from time to time, when a party of travellers arrives to inspect the interior. We had only our donkey men, and could not have spared the time to seek for hands to remove the sand. The other, and much smaller pyramids of the Saccareh group, one of which is called Mustaba Pharoon, or Pharoah's throne, are in a very ruinous condition.

We did not visit the Ibis mummy-pits here, the descent to which is through extremely narrow passages choked as usual with dust and rubbish, the smell very unpleasant; and should you penetrate so far, you see but little except musty earthen pots containing the mummified remains of the sacred birds. Of this molelike way of seeing subterranean wonders, I had experience enough in the great pyramid, and in Upper Egypt, and lack the antiquarian spirit to repeat such explorations at the cost of so many annoyances.

Between Thebes and Assouan is a pyramid on a rock, commonly known as the False Pyramid, because the rock, as it were, forms part of its base. This pyramid, like that of Saccareh, is built in stages or degrees, and although not large, is a conspicuous object from the Nile near which it stands.

Our return to Cairo was rendered tedious and unpleasant, although the distance was so short, by the strong northerly wind, and from not having laid in a stock of provisions to meet the detention.

A short time before making this trip, I visited the celebrated Nilometer at the southern extremity of Rhoda Island above Old Cairo. The slender, angular, stone column, roughly graduated into cubits, palms, and digits, stands in a square well or chamber of excellent Saracenic masonry, with Cufic inscriptions round the cornice as sharp as when first cut. Although when I visited it last month, the Nile was at its lowest, the base of the pillar was immersed to the depth of two or three feet, and such has been the rise of the bed of the river since the construction of the existing Xilometer, that at high Nile the entire column, and the chamber containing it, are submerged, and the graduation has to be continued on a painted board, placed against one of the supports of the canopy which covers the chamber, and which is quite modern, the old canopy having been thrown down some years ago. The date of the present Nilometer is of the tenth century.

Adieu: believe me, dear E , Your affectionate Brother, William Arnold Bromfield.