part of to-day, without any fixed purpose, surrendering myself to the impressions made on my mind by the various new and strange objects which met my sight. In making acquaintance with a foreign city, I have always preferred this method to that of merely verifying an inventory made by former travellers of things which they may have thought worth seeing. The character of Cairo and its inhabitants seems to me more purely Arabian than that of any other city and population which have come under my notice. At every turn some dream of school-boy days revives, and the very scenes and personages of the "Thousand and One Nights" seem to spring up into actual presence. The owner of the donkey which I had hired ran before me to clear my way, shouldering aside the motley throng with wild cries of, "Ya, Hadgi,—riglek,-shimaylek !""Thy foot, O Hadgi,-to thy left, O Hadgi!" Once I was stopped, and obliged to give way, in my turn, to a bevy of ladies, bundled up like bales of black silk, so bulky that it seemed wonderful the little donkeys which bore them were not whelmed beneath their burden. A black eunuch, in a gilded dress, preceded the party, and waved a long cane, to warn away all heedless eyes, though the most piercing glance could not have detected any outline of female form in the huge round packages under his convoy. Females

of the poorer class present, in the scantiness and simplicity of their dress, as strong a contrast to the riding attire of these ladies as the plain cotton frock of the Arab affords to the splendid costume of his Turkish lord.

Towards the close of the day I called on Mr. Walne, the English Vice-Consul, who lent me the services of his janissary, or Albanian attendant, Ibrahim, to guide me to the citadel, situated on the skirt of the mountainridge Mokattam, which overlooks Cairo. Ibrahim, a man of exceedingly fierce countenance, with a huge pair of black mustachios that curled upwards as high as his temples, rode before me, wielding a long gold-headed staff, with an air of the utmost importance, and woe to any wight who unwarily came within his reach. An elderly, corpulent Turk, highly respectable in appearance, not having withdrawn quickly enough from our line of progress, Ibrahim seized him by the collar, and by a turn of the wrist, dashed him on his back in the dusty lane. I sought to impress on my guide that such peremptory proceedings were very contrary to my wish. The Mussulman population of Egypt are said to complain, and not without some apparent reason, that they are, in the present day, treated as the dogs of the Christians.

The first circumstance which struck my

attention within the citadel is the same which excited, many years since, the eloquent indignation of Chateaubriand: "les canons" remain now, as when he visited the spot," pointés sur la ville." The court of the citadel, in which the massacre of the Memlooks took place, by order of the present Pasha, in March 1811, attracts the chief notice of visitors. Here the sole survivor of the massacre spurred his horse over the parapet wall, which surmounts a cliff of fifty or sixty feet. The noble quadruped was dashed to pieces on the rocks, but its rider reached the ground with little injury, and evaded the pursuit of his enemies. The famous edifice, which has been called "Joseph's Divan," formerly adorned with the richest architectural spoils of Memphis, and named after the celebrated Saladin, ("Yousef Salah-ed-Dyn,") has suffered much from neglect and ravage. Joseph's Well," also attributed to Saladin, was, it is probable, but deepened and enlarged by him. It still serves its original destination of supplying the fortress with water, and is one of the most remarkable works of its kind, having a spiral staircase carved out of the rock, halfway down. A mosque and a mausoleum are in course of erection within the citadel by Mehmet Ali. The alabaster, largely employed in their construction, is of great beauty, but the material of the buildings far

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surpasses their architecture, which is unworthy of notice.

The view from this height is very magnificent. The wide-spread capital beneath covers as much ground as Constantinople, and is richer in monuments of ancient architecture than the Mussulman metropolis of Europe. Cairo contains upwards of 250 mosques, of which 50 at least are remarkable for their beauty. The lofty pointed columns of their minarets rise conspicuous and glittering above the dense mass of houses. The narrow lanes, which form most of the thoroughfares of the city, being almost concealed from view by the overhanging roofs on each side, the whole presents the appearance of one compact league-wide fortress. The bazaars, with their varied stores and busy throngs, are here quite hidden from sight. Only in the open spaces afforded by two or three wider streets and a few squares, is any movement of human life visible among a population of 250,000 inhabitants. Without the walls, long trains of camels are seen approaching the gates, bringing, perhaps, as in the days of Joseph, "spicery, and balm, and myrrh."

I gazed till darkness began to gather over the city and the river beyond. As the sun went down on the desert, the giant-forms of the Great Pyramids seemed to tower more distinctly and prominently towards heaven

amid the gloom which gradually enwrapped the lower objects of the landscape.

The Pyramids.

Wednesday, March 14th.-Setting off from Cairo, at eight o'clock this morning, with my guide Ibrahim, we rode in about half-anhour to Old Cairo, a village on the banks of the Nile, on the site of a Babylonian city, and at about the same distance south from the capital as its other and more important port of Boulak is to the north. We crossed at Old Cairo, in a ferry-boat, to the left bank of the river; and, after a further halfhour's ride, by a transition as striking as sudden, passed from the richly cultivated fields watered by the Nile, and refreshing the senses with their green and fragrant crops, to the white burning boundless sands of the desert. At about eleven o'clock we reached the Great Pyramid, the nearest to Cairo, and the most ancient of the Pyramids of Memphis. The impression which I had received from a distant view of this vastest work ever raised by human hand, prepared me but little for the emotions which I felt on standing at its base. The effect produced by simplicity of form combined with grandeur of mass, is enhanced immeasurably by the situation of this monument, piled upwards to the skies amid a waste wilderness. The outer stones of the pyramid, being much