in his own native tongue, which I could neither understand nor answer. I accordingly stood still, being now quite conscious of my dangerous position; and not knowing whether it were safe even to go back. He uttered the same words again, and a third time, after another pause much shorter than before; when lo! I first saw a flash of fire, and then heard a ball pass over my head with a sharp hissing noise. I instantly fell down as if he had shot me; and for fear he might fire a second time. Of course the guard was called out, and a party of armed soldiers were in the act of coming up to me, either as I thought to put me to death, or at any rate to make me their prisoner. Fortunately, however, they came first to the donkey and the servant of Mr. Murray: who at once explained in their own language the whole matter, so that I was permitted to depart in peace, every one being right glad that I was not a dead man, and nobody more so than myself.

On my way back to my bed at the hotel, I encountered a wedding procession. First, there were a lot of jugglers performing grotesque antics-then there were musicians with hautboys and drums not a few-then came the female relations and friends of the bride, clothed in common costume. In front of the bride came a number of young virgins robed in white-then the bride herself, walking under a canopy of rich yellow silk, reaching to the ground on three sides, and open only in front, and borne by four men on the outside. Her mother and aunt walked at each side of her under the canopy. The bride was covered from top to toe with an Indian shawl, and she carried a glittering tinsel crown on her head. Mr. Murray's black servant had difficulty in guiding the donkey past her, owing to the music and many

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lights, so that she looked out, and to my surprise I saw the face of a child ten or twelve years old. Every one held wreaths of flowers in their hands, and the long procession was closed by another band of musicians, and a man bearing a painted box, said to contain the presents-to which I was called on to contribute a few silver coins. This whole affair at midnight and by torchlight was wild and savage-like.

CHAPTER III.

THE PYRAMIDS.

IN going to the Pyramids I resolved to be alone. I had heard much of the danger of being robbed, or perhaps murdered; and I had read that the donkey boys who attended the author of Eothen, overheard an ill-looking fellow, in soldier's uniform, propose to the Sheik to put him to death, whilst he was in the interior of the Great Pyramid. Fancy, says that lively writer, a struggle for life in one of those burial-chambers with acres and acres of solid masonry between myself and the daylight. But I weighed the danger of robbery and murder in one scale, against the heroism of the exploit and the enjoyment in the full influence of the solitary scene in the other. And accordingly I set out soon after midnight. for the ferry of Gihez to visit the Pyramids; the distance being about ten or twelve miles. For an hour I threaded one narrow, dark, and dirty street of the city after another -our donkeys going at a canter. I was accompanied by my dragoman carrying provisions, and to act as interpreter, and by another Arab whose duty and delight seemed to be to thump our two asses forward. And I was preceded by a torchbearer, his torch being a round iron grate fixed at the end of a long stick, which the man replenished with fuel

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as required, carrying it in a backet round his waist. As Cairo is closely shut up at night, I had procured the counter sign for the morning, that we might be permitted to pass the guards at the gate. The glare of our torch showed us hundreds of human beings lying about in the lanes in all directions, houseless and homeless beings every one of them. We cantered over and passed probably a thousand sleeping dogs. They are sandy, sharp, slouching, snarling brutes, a cross between the hyena and jackall. They make night hideous with their howl. They never move for anybody; but let a man tread on them if he dare! I reached the Nile at old Cairo; the broad river, looking sullen in the dawn of the morning, passed down in majestic flow animated by the constant movement, even at this early hour, of numberless boats. The angle of the island of Rhoda with the Nilometer, a graduated octagon pillar on which the rise of the river is marked during the inundation, here divides the stream into two branches. I crossed the river with a feeling of intense interest, as this is the spot where it is said the infant Moses was found in his basket of bulrushes by Pharaoh's daughter; and I read from the Bible the touching details of that important event. My route lay after this through a fine alluvial plain, where thousands of little canals for irrigation are conducted everywhere, the water being transferred from the one to the other by opening and damming it with the foot as in the days of Moses. I proceeded along the raised banks of the river, towards the Pyramids, which were seen in the grey dawn, seated in serene grandeur on the rising ridge of the desert. I had many long turnings and windings along gisrs or dikes, which formed the only road. Sometimes I seemed to advance direct on my object, then I would

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ALONE AMONG MURDERERS.

turn my side to it, and sometimes even my back for a while, all to avoid the miry mud-fields below. Thus I continued. for hours through acacia avenues, along many bridges over water-courses, from dike to dike, and from village to village, with their gardens and groves of palms, till at last I reached the extremity of the inundated land. Then on deep sand my way lay along the edge of the Desert, a narrow strip of which I behoved to ascend before I reached the Pyramids. Bartlette says, "this solitary neighbourhood, whence the prowling Arab, after pouncing on his prey, may so easily regain the shelter of the wilderness, bears a bad character. Many a murder," he adds, "has been committed here." The Arabs were going and coming from the fields, and I was amongst them entirely alone, cut off even from the civilization of Cairo by the broad and deep waters of the Nile. A profound solemnity obtained all around, but I felt my confidence and courage rise in proportion.

I had read so much of the bulk of the Pyramids, and they now appeared so positively insignificant in their dimensions, that I felt mortified; but I remembered that I had the same impression many years ago when first approaching the Alps. And I began to consider that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself already a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide produced cold fowl, bread, wine and Nile water in plenty at the foot of this mountain of stone, which now began to indicate its colossal magnitude. Standing beside the Pyramid, and looking from the base to the top, and especially