elsewhere. The contrasts are not so vivid. It seems only an accident that one is master and the other slave. A reverse of relations would not appear strange, for the master is as ignorant and brutal as the servant.

Yet a group of disgusting figures lean and lounge upon the upper deck, or cabin roof. Nature, in justice to herself, has discharged humanity from their faces-only the human form remains- for there is nothing so revolting as a slave-driver with his booty bagged. In the chase, there may be excitement and danger, but the chase once successful, they sink into a torpidity of badness. But this is only a cloud floating athwart the setting sun. To our new Nile eyes, this is only proof that there are crocodiles beyond-happily not so repulsive, for they are not in the human shape.

The slavers passed and the sun set over the gleaming river. A solitary heron stood upon a sandy point. In a broad beautiful bay beyond, the thin lines of masts were drawn dark against the sky. Palms and the dim lines of Arabian hills dreamed in the tranquil air, a few boats clung to the western bank, that descended in easy clay terraces to the water, their sails hanging in the dying wind. Suddenly we were among them, close under the bank.

The moon sloped westward behind a group of

palms, and the spell was upon us. We had drifted into the dream world. From the ghostly highlands and the low shore, came the baying of dogs, mellowed by distance and the moonlight, into the weird measures of a black forest hunting. Drifted away from the world, yet, like Ferdinand, moved by voiceless music in the moonlight.

"Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands

Curtsied when you have, and list,

(The wild waves whist,)

Foot it featly here and there,

And sweet sprites the burden bear.
Hark, hark!

The watch-dog's bark."

Such aerial witchery was in the night, for our Shakespeare was a Nile necromancer also. Drifted beyond the world, yet not beyond the poet. Flutes, too, were blown upon the shore, and horns and the chorus of a crew came sadly across the water with the faint throb of the tarabuka. Under those warm southern stars, was a sense of solitude and isolation. Might we not even behold the southern cross, when the clouds of Latakia rolled away? Our own crew were silent, but a belated boat struggling for a berth among our fleet, disturbed the slumbers of a neighboring crew. One sharp, fierce cackle of dispute suddenly shattered the silence like a tropical

whirlwind, nor was it stiller by the blows mutually bestowed. Our chat of Bagdad and the desert was for a moment suspended. Nor did we wonder at the struggle, since Mars shone so redly over. But it died away as suddenly; and inexplicably mournful as the Sphinx's smile, streamed the setting moonlight over the world. Not a ripple of Western feeling reached that repose. We were in the dream of the death of the deadest land.

VII.

THE LANDSCAPE.

THE Nile landscape is not monotonous, although of one general character. In that soft air the lines change constantly, but imperceptibly, and are always so delicately lined and drawn, that the eye swims satisfied along the warm tranquillity of the

scenery.

Egypt is the valley of the Nile. At its widest part it is, perhaps, six or seven miles broad, and is walled upon the west by the Libyan mountains, and upon the east by the Arabian. The scenery is simple and grand. The forms of the landscape harmonize with the forms of the impression of Egypt in the mind. Solemn, and still, and inexplicable, sits that antique mystery among the flowery fancies and broad green fertile feelings of your mind and contemporary life, as the sphinx sits upon the edge of the grain-green plain. No scenery is grander in its impression, for none is so symbolical. The land seems to have died with the race that made

it famous-it is so solemnly still. Day after day unrolls to the eye the perpetual panorama of fields wide-waving with the tobacco, and glittering with the golden-blossomed cotton, among which halfnaked men and women are lazily working. Palmgroves stand, each palm a poem, brimming your memory with beauty. You know from Sir Gardner Wilkinson, whose volumes are here your best tutor, that you are passing the remains of ancient cities, as the Ibis loiters languidly before the rising and falling north wind or is wearily drawn along by the crew filing along the shore. An occasional irregular reach of mounds and a bit of crumbling wall distract imagination as much with the future as the past, straining to realize the time when New York shall be an irregular reach of mounds, or a bit of crumbling wall.

Impossible? Possibly. But are we so loved of time, we petted youngest child, that the fate of his eldest gorgeous Asia, and Africa, its swart mysterious twin, shall only frown at us through the mand fly?

The austere Arabian mountains leave Cairo with us, and stretch in sad monotony of strength along the eastern shore. There they shine sandily, the mighty advanced guard of the desert. "Here," say they, and plant their stern feet forever, and over