us, and we entered the old port on the west side | lect to the loudest of his ability, and each car, of the city. The instant that the anchor was dropped, a swarm, like the locusts of Egypt, of all manner of specimens of the human animal, poured up the sides of the ship and covered the decks from stem to stern. It would be vain to attempt to describe them. Moors, Egyptians, Bedouins, Turks, Nubians, Maltese, nondescripts-white, black, yellow, copper-colored, and colorless-to the number of two or three hundred, dressed in as many costumes, convinced us that we were in a new country for us. There were many who wore elegant and costly dresses, but the large majority were of the poorest sort, and poverty here seems to make what we call poverty at home positive wealth. Of a hundred or more of this crowd, the dress of each man consisted of one solitary article of clothing-a shirt of coarse cotton cloth, reaching not quite to the knees, and this so thin as to reveal the entire outline of the body, while it was usually so ragged as to leave nothing to be complained of in the way of extra clothing. They went to work like horses, and I never saw men exhibit such feats of strength. The cargo of the ship was to be got out as rapidly as possible. Three or four dollars is ample pay for a hundred of these men. A penny will keep them alive a week, and five to ten cents a day is large wages. We escaped the crowd as rapidly as possible; and, having hurried our baggage down the side of the ship, we followed it into the small boat of a Coptic boatman, dressed as aforesaid, and in ten minutes we were at the landing-place, and I set my foot on the shore of Egypt. If the invasion of the ship astonished us, how much more the spot where we now found ourselves and its occupants. If from all the nations that border on the Mediterranean Sea you were to select specimens of every grade and class in society, and of every beast of burden and vehicle for man and merchandise, and throw all into a confused mass to the number of a thousand, and let each man and animal shout in his own dia LANDING-PLACE AT ALEXANDRIA. cart, and carriage shriek with its greaseless axles, you might have an idea, not one iota exaggerated, of the scene and sounds in the Custom-house Square at the landing-place of Alexandria. Conspicuous in and over the crowd are the patient faces of the camels, coming down to the water's edge with goat-skins piled on their backs to receive water for sprinkling streets, or kneeling here and there to take heavy loads of merchandise. The donkeys and donkey-boys throng the square. They are the well known substitute for cabs in Egypt. Among all this crowd imagine our astonishment at finding ourselves seated in an omnibus, and driving at a furious rate through the mass, that yielded right and left, while our horses kept up a tremendous trot or gallop for a mile, through narrow streets in which the upper stories of the houses projected so as almost to meet overhead, until we emerged in the splendid square of the Franksthe grand square of the city, and brought up with a regular European dash and jerk at the door of the Hôtel d'Europe. I think that out of ten books on Egypt and travel hereabouts, you will not find one in which the writer does not speak of the exquisite ludicrousness of the scene in this square to the eyes of a Western person. It was impossible to keep away from the windows, and impossible to resist the inclination to laughter. We actually shouted with merriment. And this mainly from the appearance of the donkeys and their riders. The Egyptian donkey is the smallest imaginable animal of the species. The average height is from three feet and a half to four feet, though large numbers of them are under three feet. These little fellows carry incredible loads, and apparently with ease. In the square were scores of them. Here an old Turk, fat and shaky, his feet reaching to within six inches of the ground, went trotting across the square; there a dozen half naked boys, each perched between two goatskins of water. Four or five English sailors, full of wonderment at the novel mode of travel, were plunging along at a fast gallop, and got foul of the old Turk. The boys, one of whom always follows his donkey, however swift the pace, belaboring him with a stick and ingeniously poking him in the ribs or under the saddle-strap, commenced beating each other. Two ladies and two gentlemen, India passengers taking their first donkey ride, became entangled in the group. Twenty longlegged, single-skirted fellahs rushed up, some with donkeys and some with long rods. A row of camels stalked slowly by and looked with quiet eyes at the increasing din, and when the confusion seemed to be inextricable, a splendid carriage dashed up the square, and fifty yards in advance of it ran, at all the speed of a swift horse, an elegantly-dressed runner, waving his silver rod, and shouting to make way for the high and mighty Somebody, and forthwith, in a twinkling, the mass scattered in every direction, and the square was free again. The old Turk ambled along his way, and the sailors surrounded one of their number who had managed to lose his seat in the hubbub, and whose curses were decidedly home-like. house, and I was not sorry to have an opportunity of witnessing the fashion of collecting the revenue of the Viceroy of Egypt. The cask had been landed from the Nubia, and, as all the other goods here landed, was in the public stores of the custom-house. Business is transacted in Arabic or in Italian, or in the mixed Arabic and Italian which forms the Maltese. We—that is, Jacques and I—accompanied by our servant and interpreter, went first to look for the wine. Having found it, I was amused at the simple fashion of getting it through the business which in other countries is made so needlessly tedious. A tall Nubian, black as night, looked at the barrel, weighed it with his eye (it was over three hundred weight), twisted a cord around it and wound the cord around his head, taking the strain on his forehead, and then, with a swing of his giant body, he had it on his back, and followed us to the inspector. This gentleman, an old Turk, with a beard not quite as heavy as my own but much more gray, addressed me very pleasantly in Italian, and passed me along to his clerk, who sat by his side, each with his legs invisible under him. The proper certificate of the contents was here made, and sealed-for a Turk or Copt never Such was our introduction to the Land of Misraim. I have said that I did not sleep on board the ship the night before. Neither did I sleep on shore that first night in Egypt. But the cause of my wakefulness was different. We have been here nearly a week at the time of my present writing, and we have not yet learned to endure the noises of the nights. Dogs abound in all places. They have no special owners, and are a sort of public property, and always respected. But such infernal dog-fights as occur once an hour under our windows no one elsewhere has known or heard of. I counted fifteen dogs in one melée the first evening, each fighting-writes his name, impressing it on the paper with like an Irishman in a fair-on his own account. Besides this, the watchmen of the city are a nuisance. There are a large number of them, and I believe some twenty are stationed in and around the grand square. Every quarter of an hour the chief of a division enters the square and shouts his call, which is a prolonged cry, to the utmost extent of his breath. As he commences each watchman springs into the square, and by the time he has exhausted his breath they take up the same shout in a body, and reply. He repeats it, and they again reply; and all is then still for fifteen minutes, excepting the voice of one tall fellah, who, either for fun or by order, I know not which, shouts under the windows of the hotel, in a voice that shakes the glass, "All right!" and once I heard him add, in the same thundering tones, "d-n the rascals!" ink on a seal-and the black carried the wine to the scales to be weighed. This was done in an instant, the weight noted, and another man received the duty, whereupon it was ready to be carried up to the hotel. All this was done in fifteen minutes or less, and the majesty of the Viceroy and ourselves were equally well satisfied. My next business was with the Viceroy himself, and this was to procure a firman, which should enable me to make such investigations in the tombs and temples of the upper country as I might think proper for the furtherance of my objects in visiting Egypt. I shall be pardoned for saying that I have in view the prosecution of studies, in which I have for some years been engaged, into the history of ancient Egypt, and it is my intention-solely for my personal gratification, in the first place, and with some One sound there is in the night time that slight hope that I may light on matters of inreaches my ears with a sweetness that I can not terest to science and the world-to make exfind words to express. In a moment of the ut- plorations as far as possible in the unopened most stillness, when I was falling quietly asleep, fields which abound from Alexandria to the when all the earth and air and sky was calm Second Cataract. For this purpose I was aware and peaceful, a voice fell through the solemn that a firman, or permission under the seal of night, clear, rich, prolonged, but in a tone of the Viceroy, would be necessary, and for this I rare melody that thrilled through my ears, and applied, and with success. This firman obtainI needed no one to tell me that it was the mu-ed, I was prepared to commence my work and ezzin's call to prayer. "There is no God but pleasure in Egypt, beginning here at AlexanGod!" said the voice, in the words of the Book dria, where most travelers pause but a single of the Law given on the mountain of fire, and day. our hearts answered the call to pray. Here indeed but little of the very ancient My first business in Alexandria was to get was to be expected. It was in the later years on shore from the steamer the various articles of Egypt, when the glory of the Pharaohs had which we had purchased at Marseilles and Malta departed, and kings that knew not the Pharaoh for a winter on the Nile. One of these, a quar- who knew not Joseph had erased his name, and ter cask of Marsala wine-Woodhouse's best-substituted their own on his monuments; it was must necessarily pass through the custom-when Memphis was old and Thebes was crum bling, that the Alexandrian splendor filled the Eastern, though it was then called the Western world. I had no desire to spend time or money here, farther than to take one step backward in time before I found myself treading the halls of Rameses. The Pillar of Diocletian, and the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle, were of course the first objects to be visited. Then we took donkeys and made a circuit of the ruins of the old city, which lie underground, excavated here and there by the fellahs in search of stone for lime and building purposes. Within a short time past some new catacombs have been discovered or uncovered on the shore of the Mediterranean, two miles east of the city, and thither we directed our donkeys on the morning of the third day. You would have supposed that we were used to riding them all our lives, had you seen the four which we mounted, and the speed at which we dashed down the long street that leads to the Rosetta Gate, followed by our four boys, shouting and screaming to the groups of people walking before us. We raised a cloud of dust all the way, and elicited not a few Mohammedan curses from women with vailed faces, whose black eyes flashed contempt on the bare faces of Amy and May. Now working to windward of a long row of camels laden with stone, now to leeward of a gathering of women around a fruit-stall, now passing a funeral procession that went chanting their songs along the middle of the way-we dashed in a confused heap, donkeys and boys, through the arched gateway, to the terror of the Pasha's soldiers who sat smoking under the shade, across the draw-bridge with a thunder that you would not have believed the donkey's hoof could have extracted from the plank, through the second arch, and out into the desolate, barren tract of land, without grass or tree or living object for miles, where once stood the palaces of the city of Cleopatra. Winding our way over the mounds of earth that conceal the ruins, catching sight here and there of a projecting cornice, a capital, or a slab of polished stone, we at length descended to the shore at the place where the men are now engaged in digging out stone for lime and buildings in the modern city. Formerly the shore for a mile or more must have been bordered by a great Necropolis, all cut in solid rock. During a thousand years the entire shore has sunk, I have no means of estimating how much, but not less than thirty feet, as I judge from a rough observation; it may have been fifty, or even more. By this many of the rock-hewn tombs have been submerged entirely, and those on the shore have been depressed, and many of them thrown out of perpendicular, while the rock has been cracked, and sand has filled the subterranean chambers. Of the period at which these tombs were commenced we have no means now of judging. It is sufficiently manifest, however, that they have served the purposes of successive generations of nations, if I may use the expression; and have in turn held Egyptians, who were removed to make room for Romans, who themselves slept only until the Saracens needed places for their long sleep. No one has examined them with special care, and now from day to day they are disappearing, as the ignorant fellahs blow them to pieces with gunpowder. Selecting a spot where the workmen had gone deepest, and hiring half a dozen men to work under our direction, Jacques and I proceeded to open carefully some of the tombs, hoping to find some indication of their period. May and Amy sat in a niche of an open tomb, shaded from the sun, and looking out at the sea, which broke with a grand surf at their very feet. After breaking into three in succession of the unopened niches, we at length struck on one slab inlaid in cement. It required gunpowder | common shape, being a simple tub with a cover. to start it. The tomb was about two feet six inches wide by the same height, and extended seven feet into the rock. The others on all sides of the room were of the same dimensions. There were in all twenty-four. Upon opening this and entering it, we found a skeleton lying at full length, in remarkable preservation, and evidently that of a man in the prime of life. At his head stood an alabaster vase, plainly but beautifully cut, in perfect preservation, and as pure and white as if carved but yesterday. The height of the vase is seventeen and a half inches, the greatest diameter nine and a half inches. It consisted of four different pieces-the pedestal, the main part of the vase, the cover, and the small knob or handle on the top; not broken, but so cut originally. Pursuing our success, we removed the bones of the dead man, reserving only a few to go with the vase, and then searched carefully the floor of the tomb, which was covered with fine dust and sand. Here we at length hit on the top of another vase; and after an hour of careful and diligent work, we took out from a deep sunk hole in the rock, scarcely larger than itself, an Etruscan vase, which on opening we found to contain burned bones and ashes, as fresh in appearance as if but yesterday deposited. This vase or urn is fifteen inches high, and its largest diameter is eleven inches. It is of fine earthenware, ornamented with flowers and devices, as I have shown in the accompanying drawing. FUNEREAL VASE. The next tomb contained nothing but bones and dust; and in the bottom of the next we found another alabaster urn let into the floor, as I have described the second, but of the most VOL. XII.-No. 68.-Q We were disappointed in finding no inscriptions, coins, or other indications of the precise period of the sepulture of these relics, and the reader, with the drawings before him, has precisely the same means of conjecture that we had, and may guess as well as we. By this time the evening was coming on, and we all went down to the sea-shore, and saw the sun set behind the buildings which occupy the site of the old Pharos, and then mounting our donkeys, we came into the city at a slower pace than before, carrying our vases and sundry little pieces of broken pottery in our hands. The next morning we were up and away at an earlier hour, but fearing to fatigue the ladies too much by a second long ride, we took a carriage to drive out as near as possible to the catacombs. It was not the Oriental fashion. We had no right to try it. The driver said he could do it easily, he had been before, and lied like an Italian about it, so that we trusted him. But we had hardly got out of the Rosetta Gate, and turned up the first hill over the ruins of the ancient city, when one of the horses baulked, and the carriage began backing, but instead of backing straight, the forewheels cramped, and the first plunge of the baulky horse forward took him and us over the side of the bank and down a steep descent into an excavation. The pole of the carriage snapped short off, and the other horse, dragged into the scrape by his companion, fell down, and the carriage ran directly over him, and rested on his body. The ladies sprang out as it stopped, and we all reached the ground safely; but there was another ruin on the top of the old ruins. It was, in point of fact, what we call in America a total smash, and we sent back for donkeys, while we amused ourselves with wandering over the site of the old city. This day I was determined to go deeper into the vaults of the catacombs, if possible, than before, and I commenced on the side of the sea where an opening existed into a room that was painted in the brilliant colors of the Egyptians, but arched over by Romans at a later period. Setting my men at work here by the light of candles, I was not long in penetrating the bottom of the chamber by a hole which opened into the roof of a similar room below. I thrust myself through the hole as rapidly as possible, but found that the earth had filled it to within three feet of the top. Two hours' work cleared it out; but I found nothing, for the dampness of the sea had reached it, and all was destroyed except the solid walls. Here May, who had watched my progress with anxious interest, became discouraged, and followed Jacques and Amy, who had previously deserted the catacombs and gone down to the sea-shore to gather shells, which lay in bushels all along the sand. A few moments later one of the men came to tell me that they had opened a new gallery of tombs, and I hastened to see it. Though not what I expected from their description, it was sufficiently strange to be worth examining. knees, guided by an Egyptian boy, creeping into the cavern to see what was going on. Having opened all of three tiers of graves that were above ground, I found between the tops of the niches smaller niches, plastered over like the others, and containing broken urns and the remains of burned bones. I found nothing in all this gloomy series of graves but a few lamps of earthenware, blackened about the hole for the wick, sad emblem of departed light and life. We came out from the vaults and walked down to the beach, where the cool wind revived us. Four hundred feet from the shore was a curious rocky island, and Jacques and I went out to it. It was full of open tombs, a part of the great necropolis sunken in the sea, and all the way from the shore we found traces of the same great burial-place. Crawling on my hands and knees about twenty feet through an arched passage cut in the stone, and measuring thirty-two inches in width by thirty-six in height at the centre, I found myself in a chamber twenty-one feet long by fifteen broad. The roof was a plain arch. Its height it was impossible to tell, for the earth had sifted into it through huge fissures in the rock, and by the slow accumulation of two thousand years or less, had filled it on one side to within eight feet of the roof. But the earth had come in only on that side, and had run down in a steep slope toward the other side, which was not so full by fifteen feet. Nevertheless there was no floor visible there, but the lowest stones in that wall were huge slabs of granite, and on lying down I could see that the slope of the We left the catacombs again at sunset, and earth ran under them, into what I have no rode home slowly over the hills. As we enterdoubt was a stone staircase, arched with granite, ed the gate of the city we met a marriage proleading down into the catacombs below. The cession, the bride surrounded by her female room was plastered plainly with a smooth whit- friends on the way to her husband's house. She ish-gray plaster, on three sides. The fourth carried on her head a huge box, or chest, conside, that over the granite stairway, and, as I taining all her dower, and her friends shouted have explained, the side where the earth was and sang as they passed us. We quickened lowest, was solid rock, with two immense shelves our speed as we approached the great square of rock, one six feet above the other, left there until it was a fast gallop, and we came up to the in the excavation, and evidently intended as hotel at a pace that evidently astonished the places on which to stand funereal urns and vases. score or more of English people on the balcony, But what struck me as most remarkable, was who are waiting the departure of the steamer that a rough projecting cornice was left across for England that will carry this article. This the chamber, corresponding with the fronts of is a fast world. Eight weeks ago I was swimthe shelves, in which were five immense iron ming in Lake Erie by the side of my old friend nails, or spikes, with heads measuring two inch- W-, and to-day I have bathed in the Medies across. The heads of but two were left, the terranean among the tombs of the Greeks and others having rusted off. I could not imagine Egyptians. any other object to which these nails were applied unless to hold planks which may at some time have covered these shelves. Upon the shelves were lying masses of broken pottery and vases; but nothing perfect or valuable. I then proceeded to strike the plastered walls with my hammer, and at length found a place that sounded hollow. Two fellahs went to work instantly, and soon opened a niche which had been walled up and plastered over. It was in the usual shape, two feet eight inches wide, by three feet high in the centre, and seven feet deep. In it lay a skeleton and the dust of a dead man, nothing more. I proceeded, and in an hour I had opened twelve similar niches, or openings, some larger, and containing as many as three skeletons each. It was a strange sensation that of crawling into these resting-places of the dead of long ago, on my hands and knees, feeling the soft and moss-like crush of the bones under me, and digging with my fingers in the dust for memorials of its life and activity. My clothes, my eyes, my throat, were covered and filled with the fine dust of the dead, and I came out at length more of an ancient than modern in external appearance. During the process of my investigations the passage-way by which we had entered was darkened, and I soon saw May on her hands and RIT BY CHARLES DICKENS. CHAPTER I.-SUN AND SHADOW. THIRTY years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Every thing in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of coun |