shadow of its own height upon the ground. This time of day is called "Al Assr." When wandering about in the deserts, I used always to eat my dinner or luncheon at that time, and it is wonderful to what exactness I arrived at last in my calculations respecting the Assr. I knew to a minute when my dromedary's shadow was of the right length. pp. 37, 38.

and passively as possible. The servant then, thrusting his arm up to the elbow in one of the pockets of his highness' voluminous trousers, pulled out a snuff-box, a rosary, and several other things, which he laid upon the divan. That would not do, either; so he came over to the other pocket, and diving to a prodigious depth he produced the missing handkerchief from the recesses thereof; and with great respect and gravity, thrusting it into the His first interview with old Mehemet Ali was pasha's hand, he retired again to his place at the in February, 1834, at Cairo:lower end of the hall.-pp. 49-51.

A curtain was drawn aside, and we were ushered at once into the presence of the viceroy, whom we found walking up and down in the middle of a large room, between two rows of gigantic silver candlesticks, which stood upon the carpet. This is the usual way of lighting a room in Egypt :-Six large silver dishes, about two feet in diameter and turned upside down, are first placed upon the floor, three on each side, near the centre of the room. On each of these stands a silver candlestick, between four and five feet high, containing a wax candle three feet long and very thick. A seventh candlestick, of smaller dimensions, stands on the floor, separate from these, for the purpose of being moved about; it is carried to any one who wants to read a letter, or to examine an object more closely while he is seated on the divan. Almost every room in the palace has an European chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but I do not remember having ever seen one lit. These large candlesticks, standing in two rows, with the little one before them, always put me in mind of a line of lifeguards of gigantic stature, commanded by a little officer whom they could almost put in their pockets.

The sense of all this apparently free-and-easy handling of the Turk by his servant is, that the servant is his chatel-and can no more be suspected of intentional disrespect than a pair of lazy

tongs.

In the course of his progress up the Nile, Mr. Curzon has the good luck to be an eye-witness of a fact mentioned by Herodotus, but not previously attested by any traveller from the lands of modern science, and consequently questioned by many of the learned lords and knights of the British Association-who will no doubt be surprised to find themselves instructed by a young collator of codices and stalker of crocodiles:

I had always a strong predilection for crocodile shooting, and had destroyed several of these dragons of the waters. On one occasion I saw, a long way off, a large one, twelve or fifteen feet long, lying asleep under a perpendicular bank about ten feet high, on the margin of the river. I stopped the boat at some distance; and, noting the place as well as I could, I took a circuit inland, and came When we were seated on the divan we com-down cautiously to the top of the bank, whence with menced the usual routine of Oriental compliments; and coffee was handed to us in cups entirely covered with large diamonds. A pipe was then brought to the pasha, but not to us. This pipe was about seven feet long; the mouthpiece, of light green amber, was a foot long, and a foot more below the mouthpiece, as well as another part of the pipe lower down, was richly set with diamonds of great value, with a diamond tassel hanging to it.

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a heavy rifle I made sure of my ugly game. I had already cut off his head in imagination, and was considering whether it should be stuffed with its mouth open or shut. I peeped over the bank. There he was, within ten feet of the sight of the rifle. I was on the point of firing at his eye, when I observed that he was attended by a bird called a ziezac. It is of the plover species, of a grayish color, and as large as a small pigeon.

We discoursed for three quarters of an hour about The bird was walking up and down close to the the possibility of laying a railway across the Isthmus crocodile's nose. of Suez, which was the project then uppermost in it saw me, and, instead of flying away, as any reI suppose I moved, for suddenly the pasha's mind; but the circumstance which most spectable bird would have done, he jumped up about strongly recalls this audience to my memory, and a foot from the ground, screamed Žiczac! Žiczac ! which struck me as an instance of manners differing with all the powers of his voice, and dashed himentirely from our own, was, in itself, a very trivial self against the crocodile's face two or three times. one. The pasha wanted his pocket-handkerchief, The great beast started, and, immediately spying his and looked about and felt in his pocket for it, but danger, made a jump up into the air, and, dashing could not find it, making various exclamations dur-into the water with a splash which covered me with ing his search, which at last were answered by an attendant from the lower end of the room-"Feel in the other pocket," said the servant. Well, it is not there," said the pasha. "Look in the other, then." "I have not got a handkerchief," or words to that effect, were replied to immediately, "Yes, you have ;"- No, I have not ;"-"Yes, you have." Eventually this attendant, advancing up to the pasha, felt in the pocket of his jacket, but the handkerchief was not to be found; then he poked all round the pasha's waist, to see whether it was not tucked into his shawl. That would not do; so he took hold of his sovereign and pushed him half over on the divan, and looked under him to see whether he was sitting on the handkerchief; then he pushed him over on the other side. During all which manoeuvres the pasha sat as quietly

66

mud, he dived and disappeared. The ziczac, to my increased admiration, proud apparently of having saved his friend, remained walking up and down, uttering his cry, as I thought, with an exulting voice, and standing every now and then on the tips of his toes in a conceited manner, which made me justly angry with his impertinence. After having waited in vain for some time, to see whether the crocodile would come out again, I got up from the bank where I was lying, threw a clod of earth at the ziczac, and came back to the boat, feeling some consolation for the loss of my game in having witnessed a circumstance the truth of which has been disputed by several writers on natural history.—pp.

149-151.

Our readers may, if they please, turn back to

the Q. R. of Christmas, 1845, for the most im- vied with the clusters of the green limes with their portant of Mr. Curzon's book-hunts among the sweet white flowers, which luxuriated in a climate monks of the Nitrian desert in Upper Egypt, as too hot and sultry for the golden fruit of the orange, which is not to be met with in the valley of the well as our own summary of their past history Nile. Flowers and fair branches exhaling rich perand present abject condition. Though the ac-fume and bearing freshness in their very aspect becount of his discoveries in the vault and tower at came more beautiful from their contrast to the Baramous was not so full as that now printed, it was picturesque and for our purposes sufficient. But his emergence from the murky and musty store of oil-vats and patristic vellum is new, and

not to be omitted :

dreary arid plains outside the convent walls, and this great difference was owing solely to there being a well of water in this spot from which a horse or mule was constantly employed to draw the fertilizing streams which nourished the teeming vegetation of this monastic garden.

On leaving the dark recesses of the tower I paused at the narrow door by which we had entered, both to accustom my eyes to the glare of daylight, and to look at the scene below me. stood on the top of a steep flight of stone steps, by which the door of the tower was approached from the court of the monastery; the steps ran up the inside of the outer wall, which was of sufficient thickness to allow of a narrow terrace within the parapet; from this point I could look over the wall on the left hand upon the desert, whose dusty plains stretched out as far as I could see, in hot and dreary loneliness to the horizon. To those who are not familiar with the aspect of such a region as this, it may be well to explain that a desert such as that which now surrounded me resembles more than anything else a dusty turnpike-road in England on a hot summer's day, extended interminably both as to length and breadth. A country of low rounded hills, the surface of which is composed entirely of This is very good. Nor can we pass the subgravel, dust, and stones, will give a good idea of sequent discovery that within the strong wall of the general aspect of a desert. Yet, although these Coptic fathers shelter had been found for the parched and dreary in the extreme from their vast- remnant of an Abyssinian brotherhood, whose ness and openness, there is something grand and own monastery far off in the desert had been sadsublime in the silence and loneliness of these burn-ly mauled by certain Ishmaelites, and was since ing plains; and the wandering tribes of Bedouins fallen into utterly desperate dilapidation. Every who inhabit them are seldom content to remain long in the narrow enclosed confines of cultivated spring these guests were recruited by one or two land. There is always a fresh breeze in the desert, Abyssinian pilgrims on their way back from Jeruexcept when the terrible hot wind blows; and the salem; and so for many years the little stranger air is more elastic and pure than where vegetation community had pretty nearly kept up its original produces exhalations which in all hot climates are muster. His ear was suddenly invaded by the more or less heavy and deleterious. The air of sound of a psalmody different in character from the desert is always healthy, and no race of men enjoy a greater exemption from weakness, sick-that of the Coptic choir, and accompanied by a ness, and disease than the children of the desert, most barbarous squeaking and grinding of hitherto who pass their lives in wandering to and fro in search of the scanty herbage on which their flocks are fed, far from the cares and troubles of busy cities, and free from the oppression which grinds down the half-starved cultivators of the fertile soil of Egypt."

I stood gazing and moralizing at these contrasted scenes for some time; but at length, when I turned my eyes upon my companions and myself, it struck Ime that we also were somewhat remarkable in our way. First there was the old blind grey-bearded abbot, leaning on his staff, surrounded with three or four dark-robed Coptic monks, holding in their hands the lighted candles with which we had explored the secret recesses of the oil-cellar; there was I, dressed in the long robes of a merchant of the East, with a small book in the breast of my gown and a big one under each arm; and there were my servants armed to the teeth and Jaden with old books; and one and all we were so covered with dirt and wax from top to toe, that we looked more as if we had been up the chimney than like quiet people engaged in literary researches.-p. 93.

Whilst from my elevated position I looked out on my left upon the mighty desert, on my right how different was the scene! There below my feet lay the convent garden in all the fresh luxuriance of tropical vegetation. Tufts upon tufts of waving palms overshadowed the immense succulent leaves of the banana, which in their turn rose out of thickets of the pomegranate, rich with its bright green leaves and its blossoms of that beautiful and vivid red which is excelled by few even of the most brilliant flowers of the East. These were contrasted with the deep dark green of the caroub or locust-tree; and the yellow apples of the lotus

*John Abernethy used to tell his scholars that all human maladies proceed from two causes-stuffing and fretting. Mr. Curzon seems to agree with this theoryby which our great surgeon's own personal practice was not regulated.

unknown hurdigurdies. The story of the siege, the rapine, and the exile was told-and when the Abyssinian service was over, and the party filed out of their little chapel-of-ease in a corner of the court, an introduction took place. He says

These holy brethren were as black as crows; tall, thin, ascetic-looking men, of a most original aspect and costume. I have seen the natives of many strange nations, both before and since, but I do not know that I ever met with so singular a set of men, so completely the types of another age and of a state of things the opposite to European, as these Abyssinian Eremites. They were black, as I have already said, which is not the usual complexion of the natives of Habesh; and they were all clothed in tunics of wash leather made, they told me, of gazelle-skins. This garment came down to their knees, and was confined round their waist with a leathern girdle. Over their shoulders they had a strap supporting a case, like a cartridgebox, of thick brown leather, containing a manuscript book; and above this they wore a large shapeless cloak or toga, of the same light yellow

speak the languages of animals of all kinds, ali created beings were subservient to his will. Now when the king wanted to travel, he made use, for his conveyance, of a carpet of a square form. This carpet had the property of extending itself to a sufficient size to carry a whole army, with the tents and baggage; but at other times it could be reduced so as to be only large enough for the support of the royal throne, and of those ministers whose duty it was to attend upon the person of the sovereign. Four genii of the air then took the four corners of the carpet, and carried it with its contents wherever King Solomon desired. Once the king was on a journey in the air, carried upon his throne of ivory over the various nations of the earth. The rays of the sun poured down upon his head, and he had nothing to protect him from its

wash-leather as the tunic; I do not think that they wore anything on the head, but this I do not distinctly remember. Their legs were bare, and they had no other clothing, if I may except a profuse smearing of grease; for they had anointed themselves in the most lavish manner, not with the oil of gladness, but with that of castor, which however had by no means the effect of giving them a cheerful countenance; for although they looked exceedingly slippery and greasy, they seemed to be an austere and dismal set of fanatics, true disciples of the great Macarius, the founder of these secluded monasteries, and excellently calculated to figure in that grim chorus of his invention, or at least which is called after his name, "La danse Macabre," known to us by the appellation of the Dance of Death. They seemed to be men who fasted much and feasted little; great observers heat. The fiery beams were beginning to scorch were they of vigils, of penance, of pilgrimages, and midnight masses; eaters of bitter herbs for conscience' sake. It was such men as these who lived on the tops of columns, and took up their abodes in tombs, and thought it was a sign of holiness to look like a wild beast-that it was wicked to be clean, and superfluous to be useful in this world; and who did evil to themselves that good might come. Poor fellows! they meant well, and knew no better; and what more can be said for the endeavors of the best men?-pp. 94–96.

his neck and shoulders, when he saw a flock of vultures flying past. "Oh, vultures!" cried King Solomon, "come and fly between me and the sun, and make a shadow with your wings to protect me, for its rays are scorching my neck and face." But the vultures answered, and said, "We are flying to the north, and your face is turned towards the south. We desire to continue on our way; and be it known unto thee, O king! that we will not turn back on our flight, neither will we fly above your throne to protect you from the sun, although Then King Solomon lifted up his voice and said, its rays may be scorching your neck and face."

Cursed be ye, O vultures!-and because you will not obey the commands of your lord, who rules over the whole world, the feathers of your necks shall fall off; and the heat of the sun, and the cold of the winter, and the keenness of the wind, and the beating of the rain shall fall upon your rebelfeathers like the necks of other birds. And wherelious necks, which shall not be protected with as you have hitherto fared delicately, henceforward ye shall eat carrion and feed upon offal; and your race shall be impure till the end of the world." And it was done unto the vultures as King Solomon had said.

Nevertheless, these black and odoriferous men of Habesh could do what their Coptic hosts could not-" they could all read fluently out of their own books." (p 98.) Their kitchen and refectory was also their library. All around the walls, just within arm's reach, were long wooden pegs, and on each peg hung one, two, or three of the leathern bags above mentioned, some square, some oblong, all well strapped and buckled. These contained the Service-books, Evangelisteria, and Hagiologies, which constituted the library. In the middle of the floor was a hearth, on which one brother was busy with the Now it fell out that there was a flock of hoopoes lentile-soup. The table was ready for dinner close by—that is, a long board or tray placed flat flying past; and the king cried out to them, and said, "O hoopoes! come and fly between me and on the ground; pots and pans-a very few-the sun, that I may be protected from its rays by garnished low shelves behind the cook; beneath the shadow of your wings." Whereupon the the important pegs long spears, and also some king of the hoopoes answered, and said, "O king, long pipes, rested against the wall. The stran- we are but little fowls, and we are not able to afford ger, if introduced without preface, would have much shade; but we will gather our nation tofancied himself in the guard-room of some of Me-gether, and by our numbers we shall make up for hemet Ali's irregulars, surrounded suitably with their arms, knapsacks, and cartridge-boxes. But they could read, and would not sell their books; whereas the blind old abbot of the Copts, was, as previously set down, easily seduced by a second bottle of rosoglio; and so much the better, not only for Parham but for the Museum.

On his way from one of these cœnobia to another, Mr. Curzon had the good fortune to be piloted by a Mussulman cobbler, who villipended his last, addicted himself (like many of his craft here) to poetry, and possessed a considerable knowledge of history; we are favored with this very desirable specimen of his information:

In the days of King Solomon, the son of David, who, by the virtue of his cabalistic seal, reigned supreme over genii as well as men, and who could

our small size." So the hoopoes gathered together, and, flying in a cloud over the throne of the king, they sheltered him from the rays of the sun.

When the journey was over, and King Solomon sat upon his golden throne, in his palace of ivory, whereof the doors were emerald, and the windows of diamonds, larger even than the diamond of Jemshid, he commanded that the king of the hoopoes should stand before his feet. Solomon, "for the service that thou and thy race "Now," said King have rendered, and the obedience thou hast shown to the king, thy lord and master, what shall be done unto thee, O hoopoe! and what shall be given to the hoopoes of thy race, for a memorial and a reward?" Now the king of the hoopoes was confused with the great honor of standing before the feet of the king; and, making his obeisance, and laying his right claw upon his heart, he said, "O king, live forever! Let a day be given to thy servant to consider with his queen and his councillors

what it shall be that the king shall give unto us for reward." And King Solomon said, "Be it so." And it was so.

So King Solomon looked kindly upon the king of the hoopoes, and said unto him, “Behold, did I not warn thee of thy folly in desiring to have crowns of gold? Vanity and pride have been thy ruin. But now, that a memorial may remain of the service which thou didst render unto me, your crowns of gold shall be changed into crowns of feathers, that ye may walk unharmed upon the earth." Now when the fowlers saw that the hoopoes no longer wore crowns of gold upon their heads, they ceased from the persecution of their race; and from that time forth the family of the hoopoes have flourished and increased, and have continued in peace even to the present day.—p. 152.

bewail their cruel destiny. At last, flying by stealth through the most unfrequented places, the unhappy king of the hoopoes went to the court of But the king of the hoopoes flew away; and he King Solomon, and stood again before the steps of went to his queen, who was a dainty hen, and he the golden throne, and with tears and groans relattold her what had happened, and he desired her ad-ed the misfortunes which had happened to his race. vice as to what they should ask of the king for a reward; and he called together his council, and they sat upon a tree, and they each of them desired a different thing. Some wished for a long tail; some wished for blue and green feathers; some wished to be as large as ostriches; some wished for one thing, and some for another; and they debated till the going down of the sun, but they could not agree together. Then the queen took the king of the hoopoes apart and said to him, "My dear lord and husband, listen to my words; and as we have preserved the head of King Solomon, let us ask for crowns of gold on our heads, that we may be superior to all other birds." And the words of the queen and the princesses her daughters prevailed; and the king of the hoopoes preMr. Curzon, having finished his first visitation sented himself before the throne of Solomon, and of the Natron monkeries, (for he was there again in desired of him that all hoopoes should wear golden 1838,) made his way to the Red Sea, and thence, crowns upon their heads. Then Solomon said, viâ Sinai, to Jerusalem, where he wished to be "Hast thou considered well what it is that thou de-present at the grand ceremonies of Easter. He sirest?" And the hoopoe said, "I have considered well, and we desire to have golden crowns upon our says, in reference to all this part of his travels— heads." So Solomon replied, "Crowns of gold In addition to the Bible, which almost sufficed us shall ye have; but, behold, thou art a foolish bird; for a guide-book in these sacred regions, we had and when the evil days shall come upon thee, and several books of travels with us, and I was struck thou seest the folly of thy heart, return here to me, with the superiority of old Maundrell's narrative and I will give thee help." So the king of the over all the other, for he tells us plainly and clearly hoopoes left the presence of King Solomon, with a what he saw, whilst other travellers so encumber golden crown upon his head. And all the hoopoes their narratives with opinions and disquisitions, that, had golden crowns; and they were exceeding instead of describing the country, they describe only proud and haughty. Moreover, they went down what they think about it; and thus little real inforby the lakes and the pools, and walked by the mar-mation as to what there was to be seen or done gin of the water, that they might admire themselves could be gleaned from these works, eloquent and as it were in a glass. And the queen of the hoopoes well written as many of them are; and we congave herself airs, and sat upon a twig; and she re-tinually returned to Maundrell's homely pages for a fused to speak to the merops her cousin, and the good plain account of what we wished to know.other birds who had been her friends, because they P. 193. were but a vulgar bird, and she wore a crown of gold upon her head.

Now there was a certain fowler who set traps for birds; and he put a piece of a broken mirror into his trap, and a hoopoe that went in to admire itself was caught. And the fowler looked at it, and saw the shining crown upon its head; so he wrung off its head, and took the crown to Issachar, the son of Jacob, the worker in metal, and he asked him what it was. So Issachar, the son of Jacob, said, "It is a crown of brass." And he gave the fowler a quarter of a shekel for it, and desired him, if he found any more, to bring them to him, and to tell no man thereof. So the fowler caught some more hoopoes, and sold their crowns to Issachar, the son of Jacob; until one day he met another man who was a jeweller, and he showed him several of the hoopoes' crowns. Whereupon the jeweller told him that they were of pure gold; and he gave the fowler a talent of gold for four of them. Now when the value of these crowns was known, the fame of them got abroad, and in all the land of Israel was heard the twang of bows and the whirling of slings; bird-lime was made in every town; and the price of traps rose in the market, so that the fortunes of the trap-makers increased. Not a hoopoe could show its head but it was slain or taken captive, and the days of the hoopoes were numbered. Then their minds were filled with sorrow and dismay, and before long few were left to

The chapters on Palestine are among the best in the volume-without bigotry, without extravagance-a fair, honest picture, including several touches (to us) of novelty. In a volume dedicated mainly to a particular taste and pursuit, such as Mr. Curzon's, it would in fact have been irreverent to expatiate on the feelings that give the chief color to Lord Lindsay's touching and pathetic portraitures of the same scenery, and intermingle largely and gracefully in the corresponding chapters of The Crescent and the Cross;" but the genuine feeling is here, and you are made to sympathize with its depth, even where the writer seems most desirous of concealing it. Of Jerusalem, he says, the inhabitants being of motley races, and tongues, and creeds, inwardly despise each other on the score of heterodoxy, but still—

As the Christians are very numerous, there reigns among the whole no small degree of complaisance, as well as an unrestrained intercourse in matters of business, amusement, and even of religion. The Mussulmans, for instance, pray in all the holy places consecrated to the memory of Christ and the Virgin, except the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, the sanctity of which they do not acknowledge, for they believe that Jesus Christ did not die, but that he