gingerbread nuts. For if the hard, brown fruit of the Dôm be not the hard, brown nuts which our credulous youth ascribed to the genius of the baker at the corner, they are certainly the type of those gingered blisses; and never did the Howadji seem to himself more hopelessly lost in the magic of Egypt and the East, than when he plucked gingerbread from a palm-tree. The Dom is coarse by the side of the feathery date-palm, like a clumsy brake among maiden hair ferns. It is tropically handsome, but is always the plebeian palm. It has clumsy hands and feet, and, like a frowsy cook, gawks in the land. But, plumea as a prince and graceful as a gentleman, stands the date; and whoever travels among palms, travels in good society. Southward stretches the Ibis, and morning and evening sees few other trees. They sculpture themselves upon memory, more fairly than upon these old columns. The wave of their boughs henceforward, wherever you are, will be the wave of the magician's wand, and you will float again upon the Nile, and wonder how were shaped the palms upon the shore, when Adam sailed with Eve down the rivers of Eden. XXIII. ALMS! O SHOPKEEPER! THERE are but two sounds in Egypt: the sigh of the sakia, and the national cry of "bucksheesh, Howadji"-Alms, O shopkeeper! Add the ceaseless bark of curs, if you are trinitarian, and you will find your mystic number everywhere made good. "Bucksheesh Howadji," is the universal greeting. From all the fields, as you stroll along the shore, or sail up the river, swells this vast shout. Young and old, and both sexes, in every variety of shriek, whine, entreaty, demand, contempt, and indifference, weary the Howadji's soul with the incessant cry. Little children who cannot yet talk, struggle to articulate it. Father and mother shout it in full chorus. The boys on the tongues of sakias, the ebony statues at the shadoofs, the spectres in the yellow-blossomed cotton-field, or standing among the grain, break their long silence with this cry only: "Alms, O shopkeeper." It is not always a request. Girls and boys laugh as they shout it, nor cease picking cotton or cutting stalks. Groups of children, with outstretched hands, surround you in full chorus, if you pause to sketch, or shoot, or loiter. They parry your glances with the begging. Have the sleepy-souled Egyptians learned that if Howadji have evil eyes, there is no surer spell to make them disappear, than an appeal to their pockets? Like a prayer, the whole land repeats the invocation, and with the usual amount of piety and the pious. Yet sometimes it is an imperial demand; and you would fancy Belisarius, or Ramses the Great, sat begging upon the bank. Sauntering, in a golden sunset, along the shore at Edfoo, a wandering minstrel in the grass tapped his tarabuka as the Howadji passed, that they should render tribute. The unnoting Howadji passed on. Thankless trade the tax-gatherer, thou tarabuka thrummer!-and he looked after us with contempt for the Christian dogs. Farther on, a voice shouted, as if the Howadji had passed a shrine unkneeling: "shopkeepers! shopkeepers!" But dignity is deaf, and they sauntered on. Then more curtly and angrily: "shopkeepers! shopkeepers!"-as if a man had discovered false weight in his wares. And constantly nearing, the howl of Howadji grew intolerable, until there was a violent clapping of hands, and a blear-eyed Egyptian ran in front of us, like a ragingly mad emperor: "Alms! O shopkeeper!" "To the devil, O Egyptian!" For no shopkeeper on record ever gave alms except to the miserable, deformed, old, and blind. They are the only distinctions you can make or maintain, in an otherwise monotonous mass of misery. Nation of beggars, effortless, effete, bucksheesh is its prominent point of cortact with the Howadji, who, revisiting the Nile in dreams, hears far-sounding and forever: "Alms, O shopkeeper!" XXIV. SYENE. Some from farthest South Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, APPROACHING Assouan, or the Greek Syene, which we will henceforth call it, as more graceful and mu sical, the high bluffs with bold masses of rock heralded a new scenery—and its sharp lofty forms were like the pealing trumpet tones, announcing the crisis of the struggle. It was a pleasant January morning, that the Ibis skimmed along the shore. The scenery was bolder than any she had seen in her flight. Rocks broke the evenness of the river's surface, and in the heart of the hills the river seemed to end, it was so shut in by the rocky cliffs and points. The town Syene is a dull mud mass, like all other Egyptian towns. But palms spread luxuriantly along the bank, and on the shores of Elephantine-the island opposite-sweeps and slopes of greenery stretched westward from the eye. Upon that shore the eye lingers curiously upon the |