thunder, and the hiss of homeless streams." "On every side the multitudinous streams . . . rushed in dark tumult thundering." "And, hark! the ghastly torrent mingles its far roar with the breeze murmuring in the musical woods."* Landor recals to mind his boyish saunterings among the hollies of Needwood's breezy glade, "where pebbly rills their varied chirrup made."+ Chirrup is a new epithet, rather bold, but expressive; happier than what John Clare hit upon, when he looked out for a new one,-giggling, to wit: "Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze, or list the giggling of the brook." Southey lays Thalaba to sleep, "lulled by the soothing and incessant sound, the flow of many waters, blended oft with shriller tones and deep low murmurings, which from the fountain caves in mingled melody like faery music, heard at midnight, came."§ At another period in the young Destroyer's wanderings, "No sound intruded on his solitude, only the rivulet was heard, whose everlasting flow, from the birthday of the world, had made the same unvaried murmuring." The same poet's Roderick lingers at daybreak beside a fountain, "where the constant fall Of water its perpetual gurgling made, To the wayfaring or the musing man Sweetest of all sweet sounds." And in the first verse of his ballad of Brough Bells, Southey relates how to Helbeck he had strolled, among the Crossfell hills, "and, resting in its rocky grove, sat listening to the rills; the while to their sweet under-song the birds sang blithe around." The mere mention of Southey's name suffices to tell How the water comes down at Lodore,

EGYPT IN 1859.

BY T. HERBERT NOYES, JUN.

WHEN Britons are sick, they are sent for a while,
For change and repose, to the land of the Nile.
A change, it is true, if not for the better,
But scarcely repose-at least not to the letter.
Now if you desire to know what to expect,
And are not predetermined advice to reject,
In case health or pleasure, physician or friend,
To that pleasant region your worship should send,
Just lend me a moment your ears and your mind,
And I'll tell you in brief what it is you will find.

A land of antiquities, Arabs, and asses,
And attar, which all other odour surpasses;
Acacias, bazaars, barley, barbers, and bats,
Barbs, beetles, bournouses, and turbans for hats,

* Alastor.

† Miscellaneous Poems, 210.

§ Thalaba, book vi. 9.
Roderick, the Last of the Goths, V.

Summer Morning.

Ibid. book xi. 11.

Caves, caravans, caverns, the cur and the Copt,*
Who resides in a convent close-shaven and cropp'd;
Crocodiles, charcoal, cangias,† cadis, and cooks,
Whose queer craft was ne'er learnt from cookery-books;
Dahabéehs, dragomans, dirty dervishes,

Who delude their poor dupes as sham flies delude fishes;
Deserts, dirt, and divans, dromedaries, and drums,§
Whereon dolefully chanting the Nubian strums;
Dates, devotees, dôm-palms,|| doves, donkeys, and dogs;
Eunuchs, eagles, fleas, flies, flax, flamingoes, and frogs
Fans, filters, and fabulous legends of fasts,

For some forty days fed by nocturnal repasts;

Geese, granite, gazelles, gnats, goats, gum-trees, and goolehs,**
Which last, pray believe me, are rare water-coolers;

Hadjis, whose hallowed journey to Mecca's great shrine

Has entitled the rogue and the saint to combine;

Hawks, hareems, herons, hoopooes, hyenas, and henna,tt
Which Britons don't see quite so much of as senna;
Inundations, inscriptions hieroglyphical,

Dry records of dynasties long voted mythical;

The Copts are Christians. They are readily distinguished by their darkcoloured dresses and turbans, which are generally blue or black. Their own language, the Coptic, is quite fallen into disuse, but they keep themselves quite distinct from the other Egyptians. Many of them are literary characters, and are much employed as scribes and secretaries, and may be seen with pen-box and inkstand swinging at their girdles. Their convents resemble Moravian settlements rather than the Roman Catholic institutions which we designate by the term. Those that I visited at Old Cairo are of great antiquity, and full of curious old paintings and carved work. In one chapel I expressed great admiration of a magnificent screen, richly carved and inlaid with ivory, whereupon one of my Copt guides put his hand under a broken panel with the intention of breaking off a piece to present me with an act of vandalism which I signified my entire disapprobation of, and successfully resisted. No wonder these fine old specimens of art are being rapidly defaced.

Cangia-a traveller's Nile boat under two hundred ardâbs burden is so called; all boats above that tonnage are called dahabéehs.

‡ Dervishes. The dancing and howling dervishes have been too frequently described to need any notice here. There are others less known, who are more properly styled santons, or hermits. One huge giant I saw in the upper countrySheikh Selim by name-who had sat for many years on the banks of the river, near How, in a spot just out of the reach of the inundations, with no other covering than his own matted hair. He is revered as a demigod by the ignorant sailors, on whose offerings he has fattened; and I was told that the crocodiles have a still greater respect for him. The Arabs profess to believe that a crocodile frequently comes up out of the river and passes the night with him, and has even been seen sitting up and conversing with him! Probably to keep up this delusion he allows no Arab to sleep in his vicinity. He is said occasionally to return the visit of the king of the crocodiles in the Nile; and they believe him to be on equally familiar terms with the hyenas and jackals.

§ Drums. The native drum is called an "edohoula." It consists of an earthenware tube with a trumpet-shaped mouth, over which a bladder is strained. Every Nubian crew is provided with one.

Dôm-palms are only found in Upper Egypt. Their fruit tastes like gingerbread, and contains a kernel which resembles the vegetable ivory-nut.

Fasts. The Ramadan is the fast alluded to, during which the strict Mussulman neither eats, drinks, nor smokes from sunrise to sunset. In Cairo, a gun fired at sunset announces the precise moment at which it is lawful for true believers to feed. When the fast falls in summer, it is very onerous. The effect of total abstinence from water during the intense heat that prevails must be experienced to be appreciated.

**Goolehs are porous earthenware water-jars.

tt Henna, used by the natives for dyeing their nails.

Ibis, jackals, and jars, kine, kites, kickshaws, and kohl,*
Which you will not conclude kith or kin to sea-coal,
Since your wisdom will hear, without any surprise,
That it is but the paint Arabs use for their eyes;

Melons, mishmish,† and mummies, men black, red, and yellow
(The three colours mixed make a Mussulman fellah);‡
Moollahs, minarets, monuments, Memnons, and mud,
Deposited deep by each annual flood;

Oars, onions, and obelisks, owls, and ophthalmia
(Wonder of wonders, in land of such balmy air);
Pigeon-palaces, pyramids, pashas, and palms;
Plovers, pelicans, pumpkins, and quizzical qualms;||
Quails, and queer reptiles,¶ and ruins, and roses,
If ever that shrub the true attar composes;
Sand, sycamores, sugar-cane, sandals, and senna
('Twas named once before as a good rhyme for henna);
Sackéeahs,** and shadoofs,†† smoke, sherbet, and song,
Though nor music nor tune to their ditties belong;

* Kohl is powdered antimony.

Mishmish is apricot, fresh or dried, the favourite preserve of the country. A variety dried in sheets is mostly imported from the neighbourhood of Damascus, which abounds in apricot-trees. The fruit is there stoned, pressed together, and laid out in the fields to dry in sheets, which are afterwards rolled up. An American traveller, once passing through that district in the drying season, mistook the dried fruit for hides, and, without further inquiry, noted the fact, and on the strength of it published, for the information of his countrymen, that the neighbourhood of Damascus abounded in tan-yards!

Fellah, fellaheen. Peasant, peasantry.

§ Moollah, the Mussulman priest.

Quizzical qualms. There are few people who know better than the Arabs how to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel..

Lizards of many varieties abound. At the foot the First Cataract I observed a creature, genus unknown, swimming across the river. I gave chase in vain, for it disappeared among the rocks before I could come up. My dragoman, Mahomed, proceeded to explain to me, in his quaint phraseology (he was far from a good linguist), that the said creature was not a crocodile, but the produce of addled crocodiles' eggs. "Crocodiles," he said, "lay their eggs in the sand, to be hatched by the sun. When the eggs are good, they turn out crocodiles; when they are bad, they turn out these creatures." I thought at the time he was attempting, to impose on my credulity by a story improvised for my especial benefit, but afterwards found that it was really a legend current among the Arabs, and that the creature in question was in reality a very large water lizard.

** The sackéeah is a machine worked by oxen for raising the Nile water for irrigation. A series of buckets, attached to an endless rope, are wound upon a drum (after the fashion of the dredging machines which may be seen raising Thames mud), and, after filling themselves in the Nile, discharge their contents into a leaky trough, from which a little rill is kept perpetually flowing through the parched fields. These machines abound all over the country. They are often very rudely constructed.

tt The shadoof is a water machine of much simpler construction, of one-fellah power. It is simply a bucket, to the handle of which is attached a pole, which is fastened at right angles to the end of a second pole, balanced, like a see-saw, on a cross-beam supported between two upright posts. The other end of this see-saw is weighted by a huge lump of clay, heavy enough to counterbalance the bucketful of water. This machine is planted on the river bank, in which the fellah has dug a trench to admit the stream to a little pool under his feet, in which he can conveniently dip his bucket, which is then lowered by its long handle, and easily raised by the aid of the countervailing clay weight. The advantage of this arrangement is, that the fellah's hardest work consists in pulling down a weight from over his head-an operation in which his own weight tells materially in his favour-while the clay weight, in fact, lifts the water for him, or at any rate

Scarabaei and sculptures, and singular sphinxes,†
With fanciful features of long-buried minxes;

Sheikhs and soldiers, with fez-cap in lieu of a shako;
Tombs, temples, Turks, turbans, tarboosh, and tobacco;

Vultures brown, white, and yellow, veils black, white, and blue;
Water-jars, water-melons, and water-skins too;

'Tis a land where 'cute Yankees are prone much to travel in,,
And where yarns in the streets you will hear folks unravelling;
'Tis the land of the Zingari, whence comes their name,
Though some far-distant climes would the origin claim.
Yet all these, and a thousand more wonderful things,,
Which no Murray e'er notes and no poet e'er sings,
Are found in that strictest and longest of vales,
Where old Father Nilus's flood never fails

To reward the poor fellah's perpetual toil,

Give new life to his crops, and melt down his baked soil.
No winters there ever change green to dull brown,,
Or send frost to sweep the dry foliage down;
But in their long train lasting summers aye bring
Both seed-time and harvest, and flowery spring,
While the howadjees'§ eyes are mazed to behold

Both the fresh blades of green and the ripe ears of gold;,
Yet, wherever old Nilus's floods are denied,,
Sandy desert is there, and nought fertile beside.

No turf, moss, or fern decks the mountains with green,
Nor tree, leaf, or flow'r on their dry slopes is seen,
But yellow sand only, and dull rocky grey,,
Alternately hold a perpetual sway,

Till from the far west the sun's glowing beams tinge
Those wild desert hills, the rich valley's low fringe,
With bright roseate hues which melt slowly away,.
Till the rude rocks resume the most sober of grey..
Meantime the sun's set, yet a rich glowing rose
Succeeds the dull grey, the bright day's brilliant close,
The golden stars' sheen, the moon's silvery reign
Call the yellow tints back to the sand-hills again.
In groups here and there on the far-stretching plain,
Enriched with the produce of wonderful grain,
The tapering palm, that most graceful of trees,
Waves its feathery tresses aloft on the breeze,

materially equalises the labour of lowering and raising; no small advantage, considering the many hours of unintermitted labour he must spend daily at the shadoof, and considering that any ordinary back would infallibly be broken by the stooping and lifting all day.

* Scarabæi. Beetles, carved out of every variety of stone and gem, are found in great numbers, engraved with cartouches containing the hieroglyphic symbol of the reigning monarch, and other hieroglyphics, which were no doubt used as signets and seals by their original possessors.

Sphinxes. The features of the sphinx at the Pyramids of Ghizeh are too well known to need description. Of the avenue of sphinxes which once lined the road from Carnac to Luxor one only has escaped decapitation, and that is ramheaded.

The tarboosh is a red cap with a blue silk tassel, like the Turkish fez. The greater the dandy the larger the tassel. My dragoman rejoiced in a tassel nearly as big as his head, and when my boat was one day wrecked in a squall, he seemed to feel the injury sustained by this costly silk appendage more than all my losses: put together.

§ Howadjee, i. e. merchant, a term somewhat contemptuously applied to all travellers by the Arabs.

And groves of dark sont-trees afford a cool shade-
Sweet trysting-place, maybe, of dark swain and maid;
Amidst the green plain here and there a mud mound,
With many a mud-hut of crude brick is crowned,
All huddled together at each fellah's pleasure,
And built by no mason by rule or by measure;
Each wall may be reared up some seven feet high,
The chances are great that 'tis built all awry;
Each room may be, haply, as many feet square-
At least it is certain a larger one's rare-
Flat-roofed, with palm-branches laid roughly across,
As Paddy at home would lay bundles of gorse.
Windows are scarce; as for chimneys there are none;
Though haply it chance that the rays of the sun
May find their way in thro' some cranny or slit
His fierce scorching heat in the moist mud has split,
For poor Arab fellah was never yet known
So much as a pane for his window to own.
No garden adorns his most cheerless abode,
Which would be a poor gift to a good British toad;
A court-yard, it maybe, closed in by mud-wall,
Is the haunt of his hareen, his donkeys, and all;

Yet, though his own hut's thus one-storied and mean,
In palaces dwell all his pigeons, I ween;

Pyramidal palaces,* painted and fair,

With whitewash and ochre laid on with much care;

Three-storied, each story fringed round with sont boughs,
Built into the wall in such neat triple rows,

And projecting straight out some three feet or more,
To serve as a threshold for each little door.

There clouds of blue pigeons sit cooing all day,

In guard o'er their homes while their friends are away,
Taking each his salubrious dip in the Nile,

Or lining the sandbanks in long single file,
Or roaming the corn-fields in foraging quest,

Till the setting sun warns each bird home to his nest―
An earthenware nest of a conical form,

So cozy, so cleanly, so snug, and so warm-
A family nest, in which each happy brood
Owns room of its own without fear of a feud,
Till one of the clan has been captured and bled
By the hawk who resides in the palm overhead,
Or by some dire mischance a howadjee sails by
Who has dreamt a sweet dream of a cold pigeon-pie.
In the midst of each mound these gay palaces tower
Far over the huts where the fellaheen cower,
And brighten the scene with their patches of white,
Which else would be sombre enough to the sight;
For, though scattered palms lend the ghost of a shade,
The desert itself is not more bare of blade

Than the sand-heaps and mud-mounds of deep bistre brown,
That compose the drear site of a dull Arab town.

*The pigeon-houses are usually as described-decapitated pyramids painted white, with occasional patterns in red. Approaching Thebes from Carnac one sees nothing but pigeon-houses, which, built on the accumulations of sand, effectually conceal the ruins of the old Temple of Luxor. In one village north of Cairo they are built on a different pattern, and look like gigantic ant-hills, or Indian wigwams.