news to its mother," pathetically says Sir Gardner, speaking of sculptures that, to the Howadji's eye, have no more human interest, or tenderness, or variety of expression, than the chance forms of clouds or foliage.

But the Nubian days were ending, and the great gate of the cataract was already audible, roaring as it turned. Hassan piloted us safely through the half-cataracts; and the fantastic rock-vistas about Philae were already around us. Beautiful in the mild morning stood the holy island, full of fairyfigures that came and went, and looked, and lingered -Ariel-beauties among the Caliban grotesqueness of the pass. It was the vision of a moment only, scarcely more distinct than in memory, and the next we were pausing at Mahratta, where the reis of the cataract, by the terms of the treaty, was bound to pilot the boat back again to Syene.

11.

XXXIII.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD.

Ir was a bright, sparkling morning, and all the people of Mahratta seemed to be grouped upon the shore to receive, with staring wonder, the boat that had undergone in itself the Pythagorean metempsychosis taught by the old teachers at neighboring Phila-the boat that had flown southward a widewinged Ibis, and floated slowly back again a cumbrous junk-a swift bird no longer, but a heavy bug rather, sprawling upon the water with the long clumsy oars for its legs. There were two or three slave-boats at Mahratta-although we had passed scarce a sail in lonely Nubia. The brisk, busy shore was like awaking again after a long sleep—yet, believe me, it was only as one seems to awake in dreams. For the spell was not dissolved at Mahratta-nor yet at Cairo-and if at Beyrout to the eye, yet it still thralls the mind and memory.

The captain of the cataract was absent, piloting an English Howadji through the rapids; but his

lieutenant and substitute, one of the minor captains, and our former friend of the kurbash, were grinning gaily as we drove smoothly up to the bank-the latter touching up a dusky neighbor occasionally with his instrument, in the exuberance of his delighted expectation of incessant kurbashing for a brace of hours, on our way to Syene. The motley crowd tumbled aboard. As at Syene, our own crew became luxuriously superfluous-for a morning they were as indolent as the Howadji, and tasted, for that brief space, the delight which was perpetual in the blue cabin. For it is a sorrow and shame to do any thing upon the Nile or in Egypt but float, fascinated, and let the landscape be your mind and imagination, full of poetic forms. An Egyptian always works as if he were on the point of pausing, and regarded labor as an unlovely incident of the day. The only natural position of an Eastern is sitting or reclining. But these Nile sailors sit upon their haunches, or inelegantly squat like the vases that stand in the tombs, and with as much sense of life as they. The moment a man becomes inactive upon the shore, he is enchanted into a permanent figure of the landscape. The silence enchants him, and makes his repose so profound and lifeless, that it deepens the impression of silence. But the dusky denizens of Mahratta leaped and scrambled upon the

boat, like impatient souls very dubious of safe ferryage; for returning to the cataract confusion, we return to our old similitudes. Silence, too, shuddered, as they rushed yelping upon the junk, as if its very soul had gone out of it forever: and piling themselves upon the deck and the bulwarks, and seizing the huge, cumbrous oars, they commenced, under brisk kurbashing, to push from the shore, quarrelling and shouting, and mad with glee and excitement, in entire insanity of the "savage faculty."

The Howadji stood at the blue cabin door, helpless-perhaps hopeless, in the grim chaos, and turning backward, as the boat slid from the shore upon the glassy stream, beheld Nubia and the farther South faint away upon the rosy bosom of the morning.

The day was beautiful and windless-the air clear and brilliant. No wind could have benefited us, so tortuous is the channel through these rapids; and, once fairly into the midst of the river, its strong, swift stream, eddying toward the cataract, swept us on to the frowning battlements of rock that rise along the rapid. The oars dipped slightly-but another power than theirs, an impetus from that bewitched fountain, in the most glorious glen of the mountains of the moon, shoved us on-the speed,

the nearing rapid, the exhilarating morning, making this the most exciting day of the Nile voyaging. The men, tugging by threes and fours at the oars, laughed, and looked at the Howadji-their backs turned to the rapid, and mainly intent upon the kurbash which was frenziedly fulfilling its functions. The pilot, whose eyes were fixed fast and firmly upon the rock points and the boat's prow, shouted them suddenly into silence at times, but only for a moment—then again, like eager, fun-overflowing boys, they prattled and played away.

In twenty minutes from Mahratta, we were close upon the first, and longest, and swiftest rapid. The channel was partly cut away by Mehemet Ali, and although it conceals no rocks, it is so very narrow, and shows such ragged, jagged cliff-sides to the stream, that with a large dahabieh like ours, driving through the gurgling, foaming, and fateful dark waters, it is a bit of adventure and experience to have passed.

The instant that the strange speed with which we swept along, indicated that the junk was sliding down the horizontal cataract, and the dahabieh, and Howadji, and crew felt as chips look, plunging over water-falls, resistless, and entirely mastered, driving dreadfully forward, like a tempest-tortured shipthat moment, the pilot thundered caution from the