proof of the abandonment of virtue. Sometimes you encounter a whole harem thus mysteriously equipped.

One is astonished at the immense number of blind persons to be met with in these streets, and indeed, everywhere in Egypt. It has been variously attributed to the continual glare of the sun, the subtile, impalpable dust, which is one of the plagues of the country, and to the transition from the dry air to the moist vapors of the Nile. Moreover, in the hope of escaping the ruthless conscription, by which Mehemet Ali recruited his armies, parents frequently deprived their boys of one of their eyes. The despotic pacha was not thus to be balked of his prey-he formed two regiments of one-eyed soldiers.

The Bazaars of Cairo, as in all oriental cities, are the great gathering places of the population, the head-quarters for news, gossip, and intrigue of the town. Through their dark labyrinths, a dense crowd incessantly pours. Each trade has its separate quarter, and there are numerous Khans, or depôts for the reception of merchandise; these are large courts, surrounded by buildings opening from the bazaars, and defended by strong gates closed at night. To wander about and mingle with the strange and turbulent crowds, impresses the European with novel sensations, every turn presenting a fresh picture of oriental life and manners.

The shopman of Cairo does but little business, and is in no sort of a hurry about it. Even with the aid of pipe and prayers, he has some difficulty to kill the time. Here is no fear of "tremendous competition," and everything jogs on in its old way. He squats cross-legged on his little carpet before his shop door, fills his pipe and puffs away. Does a customer approach, another pipe is filled and presented, and at intervals between the puffs, the trade is slowly carried on. The trader begins by asking too much, the purchaser by offering too little, and by the time the pipe is ended, the difference is adjusted, and the bargain concluded "in the name of God." When the mournful cry of the muezzin-the watchman who reminds the faithful that the hour of prayer has come-thrills from the gallery of some neighboring minaret, the shopkeeper pauses, and goes through with the appointed round of devotion and praise. Of that modern invention the newspaper, he is profoundly ignorant, but at intervals he chats with a casual passenger, or retails with his neighbor the rumors of the passing hour, or takes a quiet nap on his shop-board. Thus he contrives to while away the hours until sundown.

From the lofty citadel of Cairo, one takes in at a view the whole city, with its beautiful mosques and their countless domes, and fantastic minarets. To the east in a secluded valley stand the long ranges of the tombs of the Mameluke sultans, stretching into the desert toward the Red Sea. On the south extends the dense verdure of the Delta, where stood Heliopolis, the most learned city of Egypt, and there yet stands its obelisk, upon which Abraham may with curious eyes have gazed as he entered that wonderful land. But to the westward it is, that the chief glories of the scene expand; the long range of the dusky pyramids standing in sublime serenity above the site of vanished Memphis, on the edge of the boundless Libyan desert, glorious

relics pointing backward from an antiquity already hoary, through a long and dim vista of unknown monarchs, toward the unknown origin of civilization.

The

It is a pleasant ride of two hours from Cairo to the site of Heliopolis. traveler is surprised to find that it stood on an artificial elevation. Nothing remains of its splendid edifices but one solitary obelisk. It was at Heliopolis, it is supposed, that Moses planned the liberation of his countrymen; here too, or in the vicinity, Jeremiah wrote his Lamentations for their downfall. From the learned priests of Heliopolis, Plato, who studied here, is believed to have derived the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments.

One afternoon, our traveler, with some companions, set forth from Cairo to visit the pyramids. As they emerged from the city, they encountered one of those suffocating tempests of hot sand, which is among the most tormenting plagues of the country. They crossed the Nile by a ferry, and struck the edge of the Libyan desert as the sun was sinking behind the pyra`mids in a flash of glory. A whole posse of Arabs just then rushed forth, to force upon them their importunate, annoying services. A few blows, well laid on from the baton of their guard, a well armed Janizary, was necessary to disperse them. On reaching the place among the tombs where they intended passing the night, the Sheik of the neighboring Arab village came forward, and they agreed with him, for the services of two Arabs as guides, on the following morning, to assist them in the ascent of the great pyramid.

This done, they sallied forth on to the desert, where a majestic apparition suddenly burst upon them, whitened by the light of the rising moon, the enormous head and shoulders of the sphinx-that famous monument with the body of a lion, and the face of a young woman.-Its features, though mutilated, yet bore an expression of bland repose, and immutable serenity. Returning to their nocturnal abode in a tomb, scooped out of the rock on which the great pyramid is reared, they laid down upon their carpets, and were soon wrapped in slumber.

The next morning, the Arabs awoke them, and in a few moments they were at the base of the great pyramid. As with Niagara, so is it with these marvels of creation; it is not until you stand close beneath them, that you realize their overwhelming magnitude and grandeur. With the assistance of the Arabs, they ascended the countless layers of masonry until panting and palpitating they had gained the summit.

The view from the great pyramid is as wonderful as the structure itself. From its top they looked down upon two regions different as life itself. Far as the eye could see, stretched away the glorious valley, the eternal fertility of which has outlived the empires founded upon, and nourished by, its wonderful soil. And everywhere coming up to its green edge, like an impassable barrier, were the yellow sands of the boundless Libyan desert. Over the eastward mountains on the other side of the Nile, the sun uprose like a ball of intense fire. As it climbed the sky, the distant Nile flushed with the growing splendor. The smoke curled up from the Arab villages, and the barking of dogs, the shrill voices of Fellahs, and the lowing of cattle, faintly

ascended to their lofty post. But the only sound that arose from the immense expanse of the Libyan desert, was the wailing of the winds over its dead surface in wild and mournful music.

For 2,000 years the builders and the objects of the pyramids, were mysteries which baffled all the wise men of various ages. At length the discoveries of Champollion, have enabled the monuments to tell their own history, to disclose their objects, and the names of their builders. Recent explorations have brought to light no less than sixty-nine pyramids, which are proved to have been a succession of royal monuments; the size of each is supposed to have been corresponding to the length of the reign of each builder, who added every year a fresh layer of stones until his decease, when the pyramid was finished and closed up. When we view the night of immeasurable antiquity into which their history extends, we can appreciate the sublime exclamation of Napoleon, when upon the plain beneath, prepared to give battle to the Mameluke cavalry; "Soldiers! from the summit of these monuments forty centuries look down upon you."

The entrance to the great pyramid is about forty feet from the ground. Within it are several narrow channels, all running in a sloping direction, their united length being many hundred feet. They conduct to several apartments, the most prominent of which, are the king's and the queen's chambers. The last is under the very top of the pyramid, and beneath it is supposed that the body of the king was deposited 4,000 years ago. The king's chamber, the principal room, is entirely constructed of red granite, as is also an empty sarcophagus, or stone coffin, which there rests upon an enormous granite block. In a passage above this chamber, was discovered an engraved tablet in hieroglyphical characters, bearing the name of King Suphis, the founder of the pyramid.

That a people who could erect such monuments as the pyramids must have arrived at a high degree of civilization and refinement is a natural inference, and one fully corroborated by the remarkable modern discoveries among the numerous surrounding tombs. Wilkinson had already found representations of "the trades, boats, repasts, dancing, agricultural and farming processes, as in the tombs of later date, at Thebes and elsewhere, and with enumerations in figures of the wealth of the owner of the tomb, which, like that of Abraham, consisted principally in flocks and herds. He remarks, that a picture of a butcher sharpening his red knife on a blue rod, seems to prove the use of steel. Copper, we know from the monumental tablets at those places, was brought by the kings of this dynasty from the neighboring peninsula of Sinai, where their names are engraved upon the rocks. These mysterious pyramids, which have excited the conjectures and baffled the scrutiny of ages-even the empty tombs that were abandoned to the bats and jackals seem now, by the Prometheus wand of hieroglyphical discovery, to reveal a world of 'curious information as to minutest details of a civilization existing some four thousand years ago.

It has latterly been maintained that these stupendous monuments were erected by gradual and easy degrees, by paid labor, and at government expense; serving, in fact, the most useful and beneficent design of giving

employment to the poorer classes of a vast agricultural population, confined by nature on a mere strip of alluvial soil, when thrown idle three months of the year by the inundation of the Nile.

CHAPTER II.

DESCRIPTION of the Egyptian hieroglyphics-the Rosetta Stone -Mexican hieroglyphicsChinese do. -Dancing girls-Morning on the Upper Nile -Villages -Tombs of Beni Hassan-Boatmen of the Nile-Siout-Slave boat-Melancholy spectacle-Temple of Dendera-Keneh-Ruins of Thebes-their vastness-Temples of Carnac and Luxor The Vocal Memnon-Metropolis of Death-Process of Embalming-Address to the Mummy at Belzoni's exhibition-Esneh-Edfou-Splendor of Ancient Egypt-Sketch of the Life of Mehemet Ali.

THE earliest and simplest mode of recording events seems to have been that of hieroglyphics or picturę writing, which is a rude delineation of objects, such as that by which the Mexican scouts informed their master Montezuma of the arrival of Cortez and his band, by sketching the appearance of the Spaniards, their ships, horses, and fire-arms. But picture writing becomes too cumbersome and imperfect a process for recording facts, and some method must be contrived for shortening the task. This is effected at first, perhaps, by sketching only a part for the whole, such as a scaling ladder to represent a siege, and flying arrows to indicate a battle, etc. The next step is to invent symbols, in which one thing is put for another, from some supposed or fancied resemblance. Thus, an eye, with a scepter underneath, denotes the king or kingly power; a hawk's head, surmounted by a disc, represents the sun, etc. By a combination of such symbols an event may be recorded, and will present itself to the mind of the beholder, who has the key of the system, without the assistance of words.

Until within the last thirty years the sculptures and paintings which so profusely cover Egyptian monuments, were entirely unintelligible, because the key to their explanation, that is, the power of reading the hieroglyphical inscriptions everywhere accompanying them, was wanting. By degrees, a nearer approach was made to this key by the discovery of the famous Rosetta stone, now in the British museum. This stone, found by the French at Rosetta, a village in Egypt, is a yard long, and nearly as broad. It contains three inscriptions. The first inscription is in pure hieroglyphic characters, the second in demotic characters, a kind of written hieroglyphics, and the third and last is in Greek. From the last, or Greek inscription, it appears that. the three inscriptions, either wholly or substantially, mean the same thing, and form a royal decree, which was ordered to be sculptured. According to the Greek inscription, it appears also, that the stone was erected in the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes, (A. c. 194,) whose benevolence it describes, and enumerates his victories, and the principal transactions of his reign.

The inscriptions are a good deal mutilated, particularly the hieroglyphical;. but they are still sufficiently distinct to allow the characters on the first and second inscriptions to be compared with each other and the Greek. As thediscovery of this stone presented to the learned the first opportunity of

viewing the Greek language along with the Egyptian written language-a known with an unknown writing-great hopes were entertained that a nearly complete key would thereby be obtained to the deciphering of the numerous monuments of ancient Egypt.

The Greek inscription thus being proved to be a translation, the attention of learned men was next directed with intense earnestness to the second or de

motic one. It appears, however, from the investigations of Dr. Young and Champollion, whose attention has been deeply engrossed with this subject, that the Greek does not faithfully represent the demotic inscription, but merely gives its substance. Hence, the great difficulties which involve this subject, and which from that time to this baffles the investigations of the scientific. Yet many of these secrets have been unraveled, and the time may come when the vast fund of information which the ancient Egyptians sculptured with so much labor will be thrown open to the perusal of the modern world.

According to Champollion, the hieroglyphical writing of the Egyptians consists of three different species of characters.

First. The hieroglyphic, properly so called, in which the representation of the object conveys the idea of the object itself, either entire or in a shortened form. Many words were thus expressed, chiefly those denoting common visible objects. These are termed, by Champollion, figurative, and are divided into figurative proper, figurative conventional,—that is agreed upon as figurative and figurative abridyed.

Second. Ideas represented by visible objects, used as symbols; and these are generally employed in the expression of abstract ideas or complex matters. For instance, such as representing a tumult by the picture of a man throwing arrows; adoration, by a censer containing burning incense, etc. In some of these the connection between the thing to be related and the object selected to depict it are easily seen; in other cases, the connection depends on associations, not understood by us, and which therefore we cannot trace.

Third. The last species of hieroglyphics consists of phonetic characters, in which the sign represents not an object but a sound. The honor of the recent progress made in the explanation of the hieroglyphical writing is divided between the English orientalist, Dr. Young, and the Frenchman, Champollion; but the latter appears to have had no small share in the original discoveries, as well as to have carried the science to a high degree of cultivation.

The walls and monuments, and statues of the ruined cities of central America are covered with hieroglyphics. These were, doubtless, sculptured at a very early day, as even the existence of these ruins were unknown at the time of the conquest of Cortez. The workmanship in some of these monuments is considered equal to the finest Egyptian sculpture; but in other it is more rude. Whence came the race who built them is a mystery ; but analogies have been descried in their works to those of the most ancient people of the old world.

The Chinese writing was originally wholly ideographic ; i. e. expressing ideas wholly by symbols, which answers to the second class of Egyptian hierogly