us.

along the shore, because Verde Giovane's "wideawake" and checked shooting-jacket are hard before We overhauled them one afternoon, and while Verde Giovane stood in a flat cap, and his hands in the shooting-jacket's pocket, and told us that Nero was just ahead and in sight that morning, Gunning suddenly sprang upon deck, blew off his two barrels, laughed hysterically, and glaring full at us, we saw-0 Dolland! that he had succumbed to blue spectacles.

XII.

ASYOOT.

SHERBET OF ROSES in a fountained kiosk of Damascus can alone be more utterly oriental to the imagination and sense than the first interior view of many-minareted Asyoot.

Breathe here, and reflect that Asyoot is a squalid mud town, and perceiving that, and the other too, as you must needs do when you are there, believe in magic for evermore.

Under Aboofeyda, from the dragoman of a daha bieh whose Howadji were in the small boat shooting ducks and waking all the wild echoes of the cliffs, we had heard of Nero just ahead, again, and had left Verde and Gunning far behind. As the Ibis flew on with favoring gales, the river became more and more winding, and the minarets of Asyoot were near across the land, long before the river reached the port of the town. Rounding one of the points, we descried two boats ahead, and we could at length distinguish the Italian tricolor of Nero His

companion bore an immense blue pennant, that floated in great bellying folds upon the wind, like a huge serpent. Suddenly we came directly into the wind and threw the men ashore to track along a fine bank of acacias. This passed, we saw the blue pennant standing across into the reach of the stream that stretches straight to Asyoot, and a few moments after, Nero emerged and strained canvass after, and we, piling in our men as soon as possible, drew round, with the wind upon our quarter, in hot pursuit. The Ibis had not time to win a victory so sure; for Nero's "Kid" frisked by the proud pennant, and mooring first to the bank, was quiet as the dozing donkeys on the shore by the time that the Ibis touched the bank, and the Howadji landed under a salute of one gun from the Kid. Salutatory Nero had an arsenal on board; but in that hour only one gun would go.

We were yet a mile or two from the town, which lies inland, and we took our way across the fields in which a few of the faithful stared sedately upon the green veiled Nera, by whose side rode the Pacha,Nero and I, and a running rabble of many colors, bringing up the rear. Herons floated snowily about the green, woodpeckers, sparrows, and birds of sunset plumage, darted and fluttered over the fields, deluged with the sunlight; and, under a gate of

Saracenic arch, heralded by the golden-sleeved Commander, we entered a cool, shady square.

It was the court of the Pacha's palace, the chief entrance of the town. A low stone bench ran along the base of the glaring white walls of the houses upon the square, whose windows were screened by blinds, as dark as the walls were white, and sitting, and lounging upon this bench, groups of figures,smoking, sipping coffee, arrayed in gorgeous stuffsfor this in sober sadness was the court circle, with the long beards flowing from the impassible dark faces,-gazed with serious sweet Arabian eyes upon the Howadji. The ground was a hard, smooth, clay floor, and an arcade of acacias on either hand, walled and arched with grateful, cool green, the picturesque repose of the scene.

This was a small square, and faded upon the eye, forever daguerreotyped on the memory, as we passed over a bridge by a shekh's tomb, a mound of white plaster, while under an arch between glaring white walls, stood a veiled woman with a high water-jar upon her head.

Threading the town, which is built entirely of the dark mud brick, we emerged upon the plain between the houses and the mountains. Before us a funeral procession was moving to the tombs, and the shrill, melancholy cry of the wailers rang fitfully upon the

low gusts that wailed more grievously, and for a sadder sorrow. We could not overtake the procession, but saw it disappear among the white domes of the cemetery, as we began to climb the hills tc the caves-temples, I might say; for their tombs are temples who reverence the dead, and these were built with a temple grandeur by a race which honored the forms that life had honored, beyond the tradition or conception of any other people. Great truths, like the gods, have no country or age, and over these ancient Egyptian portals might have been carved the saying of the modern German Novalis : The body of man is the temple of God.

These tombs of Stabl Antar are chambers quarried in the rock. They are not vast, only, but stately. The elevation of the entrances, and the proportion of the chambers, are full of character. The entrance is not merely a way to get in, but attracts the eye by its grand solemn loftiness. It harmonizes in sentiment with the figures sculptured upon its side-those mysterious high-shouldered profile figures, whose secret is hidden forever. The caves do not reach far into the hills, and there are square pits at intervals upon the ground which the donkeyboys called baths. Haply without authority.

About these caves are many bones, and a few mummied human members, whereover many Nile