The conclusion of the matter is, that I believe I shall hire a boat to-morrow, to take me down the Nile to Damiat. Thursday, March 22d. Having engaged a boat, with a crew of five hands, to take me to Damiat; also an Arab servant, who speaks a little Italian, to play the cook during the passage; we started from Boulak as evening closed in, and began to glide gently down the Nile. The setting sun gleamed on the turrets and minarets and palm-groves of Cairo, as I turned a parting look on the "victorious city." * The boatmen chant cheerily at their oars, the Raïs at the helm first giving forth a line, to which the rowers respond in chorus. They sing the glories of Mohammed, and of Ali, his standard-bearer, the "Lion of God." A change comes over the strain, as it passes to the present chiefs and rulers of the land. "Farewell, all pleasures of life," is the burden of the song, "when pressed into the service of Mehmet Basha and Abbas Basha." The monotonous Arab melody, combined with the measured fall of the oars dropping more and more lazily, produce a lulling effect. On entering my sleeping cabin, I found it pre-occupied by a host of diminutive cock * "Al Kahira."-" The Victorious." roaches, whom the lamp which I carried dispersed in all directions. My servant, Hassan, seeing me a little startled at such an unexpected swarm of guests, remarked: "Non fanno niente :"-" They do nothing :” which point of their disposition is much in unison with Hassan's own. I lay me down to rest, thankful if no mishap bring me acquainted with stranger bedfellows than the inoffensive cock-roaches, among the various kinds of vermin which, in a Nile boat, often unite their legions to take by storm "The poor terrestrial citadel of man." Benha-yl-Âsal. Friday, March 23d.-We have reached, with a favouring breeze, the village of Benha-yl-Asal, on the right bank of the river. The Damiat branch of the Nile, thus far, flows through a region much more fertile and pleasant than that which is watered by the western branch of the stream. The banks by which we glide look cheerful with plantations of poplar and groves of mulberry-trees, and the air is sweet with the perfume of blossoming shrubs. Benha-yl-Asal, though an insignificant hamlet, possesses an interest from its contiguity to the ruins of a city which, during its day, was one of the most celebrated in Lower Egypt. At about a quarter of a mile north from the village are huge mounds of rubbish, interspersed with crumbling unburnt bricks, fragments of pottery, and stones of different kinds. The extent of these ruins is the sole vestige that remains to mark the grandeur and importance of the once flourishing and splendid Athribis, coupled in renown with Memphis in former times, and in after days the seat of a Christian Bishopric. The name has long survived the revolutions of time, which have turned the city itself into heaps of dust: adjacent to the ruins, on the side remote from the river, a small collection of huts preserves the name of Atryb. If any region of Egypt were more notable than the rest for the grossness of pagan idolatry, a bad preeminence in that respect seems to have belonged to the territory bordering on the Damiatic branch of the Nile. It may appear difficult, indeed, to settle the precedence in absurdity between the inhabitants of Lycopolis, who, as the name suggests, chose the wolf for their divinity, and those of Thmuis, who selected the hegoat, or others who raised altars to the crocodile and the hippopotamus. The object of peculiar veneration in Athribis was the mouse. As the jealousy of the ancient Egyptian cities for the honour of their respective idols often led them to furious quarrels, the citizens of Athribis, as miceworshippers, would naturally be at mortal feud with those of Bubastes,* who paid their chief religious homage to the cat. "Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend, The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend? The snake-devouring ibis these enshrine, Others, where Thebes' vast ruins strew the ground, GIFFORD'S Juvenal. There is every reason for the conjecture that in the confused mouldering heaps among * Called in Scripture "Phi-beseth." Ezekiel xxx. 17. Dimidio magicæ resonant ubi Memnone chordæ, "On vit le peuple fou qui du Nil boit les eaux Ces dieux nés du fumier porté dans ses jardins." Boileau, Sat. xii. which we still trace, for upwards of two miles in length, the remains of walls more than fifty feet in thickness; also the ruins of a dike, and the line of a long and wide street, apparently, in olden time, the main thoroughfare of Athribis; we see results of the labours and burdens laid on the ancient people of Jehovah by their heathen taskmasters. Athribis was certainly within the limits of the district inhabited by the Israelites, and it is not improbable that these ruins include the very "tale of the bricks ex acted from the enslaved tribes, when Pharaoh commanded their officers," saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them ye shall not diminish ought thereof for they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God."* Samanoul. Saturday, March 24th." The land of Goshen" appears still to sustain the character given of it by Pharaoh in his speech to the patriarch Joseph: "The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell. in the land of Goshen."† Irrigated by a + Genesis xlvii. 6. * Exodus v. 7, 8. |