demanded many thousand pardons, then discovered their boat and embarked to breakfast, to recount over their Bordeaux the morning hunt of sangliers and Anglais, for one of which, they probably mistook us.

We returned too, and ate pomegranates, but went ashore again, for this was a tracking day—a day when there is no wind, but the boat is drawn a few miles by the crew. There was a village near us under the palms, and the village smoke, aerialized into delicate blue haze, made with the sunset a glowing atmosphere of gold and blue, in which a distant palm-grove stood like a dream of faery. Querulous dogs were barking in the vicinity of the mud city; for it deserved that name-a chaos of mud huts and inclosures, built apparently at random, and full of an incredible squalor, too animal to be sad. The agile Gauls were plunging across the plain, scrambling up little hillocks with their cocked muskets, causing us rueful reflections upon the frailty of human legs. Pop-pop, went the desperadoes of hunters at the tame pigeons on the palms. We wended through the fields of sprouting beans. A few women and children lingered still, others were driving donkeys and buffaloes homeward-for these hard clay hovels were homes too.

I foresee that the Egyptian sunsets will shine

much too much, along these pages. But they are so beautiful, and every sunset is so new, that the Howadji must claim the law of lovers, and perpetually praise the old beauty forever young.

This evening the sun swept suddenly into the west, drawing the mists in a whirlpool after him. The vortex of luminous vapor gradually diffused itself over the whole sky, and the Ibis floated in a mist of gold, its slim yards and masts sculp tured like Claude's vessels in his sunsets. It paled then, gradually, and a golden gloom began the night.

We emerged from the palms, on whose bending boughs doves sat and swung, and saw the gloom gradually graying over the genial Nile valley. As we neared the Ibis we met our third Mohammed, a smooth Nubian of the crew, and Seyd, the one-eyed first-officer, whom the Commander had sent to search for us. They carried staves, like beadles or like Roman consuls; for they were to see that we "took no detriment"-" for the dogs and the impudent people," said Golden-sleeve, with bodefu' head-shakings.

Thou timorous Commander! Hath not the Pacha a one-barreled gun and tales innumerable? He said that Nero had passed the mud city only the night before. But did the moonlight show him what we

saw-two Ibis perched, snowy white, upon the back of a buffalo?

Then, for the first time in their lives, the Howadji sat quietly smoking in the open air upon Christmas evening but hunted no slipper, nor was misletoe hung in the cabin.

IX.

FLYING.

THE wind rose cheerly, the tricolor fluttered and dropped behind, and leaving all rivals, the eager Ibis ran wing and wing before the breeze.

The bold mountains did not cease to bully. Sometimes they receded a little, leaving spaces of level sand, as if the impatient desert behind had, in some spots, pressed over and beyond them; but they drew out again quite to the stream, and rose sheerly in steep, caverned cliffs from the water, housing wild fowl innumerable, that shrieked and cried like birds of prey before the mighty legions.

Over these mountain shoulders, the winds not only sing, but, bloated into storms and sudden tempests, they spring upon the leaning lateen sails that fly with eagerly-pointing yards beneath, as if to revenge themselves upon the river, in the destruction of what it bears. Under the Aboofeyda and the Gebel Shekh Hereedee, and the Gebel Tookh, and wherever else the mountains pile their frowning

fronts in precipices along the shore, are the dangers of Nile navigation.

A tranquil twilight breath wafted us beneath the first, and another sunset breeze ran us dashingly toward the Shekh Hereedee. But just when the evening was darkest, a sudden gust sprang upon us from the mountain. It shook the fleet, bold Ibis into trembling, but she succeeded in furling her larger wing, and, struggling through, she fled fast and forward in the dark, until, under Orion in the zenith and his silent society, she drew calmly to the shore, and dreamed all night of the serpent of Shekh Hereedee, who cured all woes but those of his own making.

Neither was the Gebel Tookh our friend. The mountainous regions are always gusty, and the Ibis had been squall-struck several times, but ran at last free and fair before the wind, between shores serene, on which we could hear the call of women to each other, and, not seeing their faces, could fancy their beauty at will, and their worthiness to be nymphs of the Nile.

We were still slipping swiftly along under the foresail, and the minarets of Girgeh glittered on the southern horizon.

66

Why not the mainsail," cried the Pacha, "in this lulling wind ?"