tamarinds and other burdens, from Sennaar, and the tropical interior, pleasant to the imagination as to the taste. Huge camels loomed in the background, sniffing serenely, and growling and grumbling, as they were forced to kneel, and ponderous loads were heaped upon their backs. Shattered hulks of dahabieh and cangie lay, bare-ribbed carcasses, upon the sand, and deformed and blear-eyed wrecks of men and women crept, worm-like, in and out of them. Men, and women, too, in coarse blankets, or Mrs. Bull's blue night-gowns, brought all kinds of savage spears, and clubs, and ostrich eggs, and gay baskets, and clustered duskily on the shore opposite the boat, and waited silently and passionlessly until they could catch the eye of the Howadji-then as silently elevated their wares with one hand, and with the other held up indicative fingers of the price. Unless trade more active goes on

with other dahabieh than with the Ibis, the Howadji suspects the blanketed and night-gowned Syenites do not live solely by such barter. Behind this activity, unwonted and unseen hitherto, a grove of thick palms broad-belted the beach, over which, in blue sky, burned the noonday sun.

The Howadji landed, nevertheless, and rode through the town on donkeys. Dry dust under foot, yellow, ratty-looking dogs barking from the

mud-caked roofs, women unutterable, happily hiding their faces, men blanketed or naked, idly staring, sore-eyed children beseeching bucksheesh, woeless want everywhere, was the sum of sight in Syene. Thither, in times past, Juvenal was banished, and dungeoned in Africa, had leisure to repent his satire and remember Rome. For the Romans reared a city here, and Sir Gardner found remains some years since. But it was hard to believe that any spot could so utterly decay, upon which Rome had once set its seal. To a tourist from the lost Pleiad, there would have been very little difference between the brown mummies who stood silent among the huts of Syene and the yellow ratty curs that barked peevishly, as our donkeys trotted along. Brutes can never sink beneath a certain level. But there is no certain level of degradation beneath which men may not fall. The existence of the Syenites is as morally inexplicable as that of loathsome serpents in lonely deserts. In these lands you seem to have reached the outskirts of creation-the sink of nature and almost suspect that its genius is too indolent ever to be entirely organized. For all strength should be sweet, and all force made faira fact which is clearly forgotten or disproved in Syene.

The Howadji left the houses, and were instantly

in the desert-the wild, howling wilderness, that stretches ungreened to the Red Sea. It was not a plain of sand, but a huge hilliness of rock and sand commingled. There was none of the grandeur of the sand-sea, for there was no outlet for the eye to the horizon. It was like that craggy, desolate, diamond-strewn valley, into which Sinbad was carried by the roc. All around us there was much glittering, but I saw few gems. One solitary man was watering with a shadoof a solitary inclosure of sand. A few spare blades of grass, like the hairs on a bald head, were visible here and there, but nothing to reward such toil. It faintly greened the sand, that small inclosure; but the man, at his hopeless labor, was a fitting figure for the land

scape.

Among the tombs grouped together in the desert, the Howadji seemed hundreds of miles from men. There is nothing so dreary as an Egyptian burialplace. It is placed always on the skirts of the desert, where no green thing is. Huge scaly domes, like temples where ghouls worship, were open to the wild winds, and the stones lay irregularly scattered, buried in the sand. It was Lido-like, because it was sand, but inexpressibly sadder than those Hebrew graves upon the Adriatic shore; for here the desert, illimitable, stole all hope away.

A solitary camel passed-phantom-like-with his driver. Noiseless their tread. No word was spoken, no sign made. The Muslim looked at us impassibly, as if we had been grotesque carvings upon the tombs. The low wind went pacing deliriously through the defiles. The silent solitude stifled thought, and seemed to numb the soul with its deadness. But suddenly palms waved over us like hands of blessing, and, caressing the shore of Syene, ran the victor of the desert, blue-armored from his cataract triumph.

XXV.

THE TREATY OF SYENE.

AT sunset a cloud of dust.

It was a donkey cavalcade, descending the beach. Foremost rode the captain of the cataract, habited blackly, with a white turban. The pilotage through the cataract is the monopoly of a club of pilots (Mercury, God of commerce, forgive the name!) with some one of which the bargain must be concluded. They all try to cheat each other, of course; and probably manage the affairs of the partnership, by allowing each member, in turn, an illimitable chance of cheating. The white-turbaned, blackhabited donkestrian was the very reis of reises, the sinfulest sinner.

Behind him thronged a motley group, cantering upon small donkeys. At length the spell was successful, and the spirits were coming. Black spirits and white, blue spirits and gray, were mingled and mingling. Long men and short, bald and grisly, capped and turbaned variously, and swathed in ungainly garments, that flew and fluttered in the breeze of their speed, and blent with the dust of the