passed them and was gone, plunging into invisibility with a sort of fury of haste, as of a lost spirit rushing at annihilation.

Philip had raised his weapon to fire, but a shade of doubt made him forbear to pull the trigger. This man might not be the guilty one, and to kill an innocent man would be worse than to let a guilty man escape. Marion, who was looking straight forward, had not seemed to notice the figure at all as it swept past. All her faculties were concentrated elsewhere. The old white horse, apparently. startled out of his customary impassivity, lifted up his nose and rattled the waggon along at a surprising rate. But the journey was nearly at an end.

A little way beyond the bridge, the road, which had heretofore lain between hawthorn hedges, out of which, at intervals, grew large elm or lime trees, suddenly spread out to three or four times its general breadth, forming a sort of open place of oval shape, and about half an acre in area. The road passed along one side of this oval; the rest was turf, somewhat marshy toward the left. Philip stopped the horse, and he and Marion got down. He took the lantern, and they went forward on foot. The narrow rays of the lantern, striking along the ground in front, rested flickeringly upon a dark object lying near the edge of the road, next the turf. They walked up to the object, and Philip stooped to examine it, Marion standing by with her head turned away. But, at an exclamation from Philip, she started violently and began to tremble.

"There are two here !" he said.

Marion's teeth chattered. "Dead?" she said, in a thin voice. "No. At least, one of them is not. His heart beats, and . . . Yes, he's trying to say something." Philip stooped lower and let all the light of the lantern fall on this man's face. "I don't recognise him-or-why, it's Bendibow!"

Marion caught her breath sharply. "Sir Francis?"

"No, no--Tom Bendibow."

Marion said nothing, but knelt down beside the other figure, which was lying prostrate, and turned it over, so that the face was revealed. It was Mr. Grant, and he was dead, shot through the heart. After a few moments she looked up at Philip and said huskily:

"You should have fired at him.”

(To be continued.)

271

A GLIMPSE OF CAIRO.

O a casual traveller, a couple of days suffice to visit the chief points of interest near Alexandria, while a week becomes almost wearisome in that modernised city. So at least it seemed to us, and we were glad when the hour arrived to start for Cairo.

There certainly is not much romance nowadays in crossing the desert, but, on the whole, perhaps a railway carriage is preferable to a camel's back, and twelve hours are perhaps sufficient to accustom the eye to a dead monotonous flat of sand, sand, sandthen a broad extent of hard pebbly ground, like asphalte pavement, so brightly polished by the incessant friction of the sand, which through long ages has been for ever blowing over it, that each pebble glitters in the sunlight, like fragments of broken mirror-then sand again, only varied by such stunted shrubs as hardly deserve the name of vegetation, though somehow the poor lean camels scent them out by instinct, and here and there we saw a group, scarcely to be distinguished from the sandy world around them, contriving to pick up their scanty living in the desert.

In that hungry land we looked with reverence at their humps, remembering how they are divided into cells, each containing a little store of fat, which in time of starvation' is drawn into the stomach, and nourishes the camel, so that at the end of a long march he may be in good enough condition, though his hump has almost shrunk away. The wonderful cistern stomach is provided with similar cells or pouches, something like honey-comb, which act as a reservoir of pure water, and many instances are known of travellers having been compelled to kill their poor faithful beasts to obtain this and save their own lives. Thus when Bruce, the Abyssinian, was returning to Cairo, the last drop of water, the last crumb of bread had been consumed, and the exhausted camels were scarcely able to stand. The only resource was to kill the two which seemed most utterly unable to proceed, and from their reservoir a precious supply of about four gallons of water was obtained. This, with the flesh of the poor beasts, probably saved the lives of the whole party.

The first few hours of our journey were, however, by no means

in the desert. First we were on the edge of beautiful lake Mareotis, along whose reedy shores various sportsmen were looking out for teal, widgeon, and all manner of water-fowl. Snipe especially assemble here in incredible numbers, while tall white or grey cranes and rosy flamingoes stalk along the shallows. Loads of wild flowers blossom near the water, and the quaint ice-plant of our gardens grows here abundantly. The Egyptian water-grasses are quite lovely; silky, silvery plumes with sharp leaves rustling and shimmering as they wave in the light. For miles we passed by sedgy ground where the tall reeds were tossing their grand white feathery heads so joyously in the breeze.

Egyptian reeds of course suggest the old papyrus, and the "paper factories," which once existed at every town in the Delta— each factory having its own specialty by which its goods were known-some producing sheets of paper more than thirty feet long. Is it not strange in these days of cheap stationery to think of a time when both parchment and papyrus had become so rare and so exorbitantly expensive, that both Greeks and Romans were in the habit of using a palimpsest, which was simply some old manuscript with the former writing erased? Thus countless works of authors now celebrated, and whose every word is held priceless in this nineteenth century, were ruthlessly destroyed by their contemporaries. Verily those prophets lacked honour !

Many were the expedients resorted to by the early scribes for the supply of writing materials. There was no scribbling paper whereon to jot down trivial memoranda or accounts, but the heaps of broken pots and crockery of all sorts, which are so abundant in all eastern towns, proved the first suggestion for such china tablets and slates as we now use; and bits of smooth stone or tiles were constantly used for this purpose, and remain to this day. Fragments of ancient tiles thus scribbled on (such tiles as that whereon Ezekiel was commanded to portray the city of Jerusalem) have been found in many places. The island of Elephantine on the Nile is said to have furnished more than a hundred specimens of these memoranda, which are now in various museums. One of these is a soldier's leave of absence, scribbled on a fragment of an old vase. How little those scribes and accountants foresaw the interest with which learned descendants of the barbarians of the Isles would one day treasure their rough notes!

Still quainter were the writing materials of the ancient Arabs, who, before the time of Mahomet, used to carve their annals on the shoulder-blades of sheep; these "sheep-bone chronicles" were

strung together, and thus preserved. After a while, sheep's bones were replaced by sheep's skin, and the manufacture of parchment was brought to such perfection as to place it among the refinements of art. We hear of vellums that were tinted yellow, others white; others were dyed of a rich purple, and the writing thereon was in golden ink, with gold borders, and many coloured decorations. These precious MSS. were anointed with the oil of cedar to preserve them from moths. We hear of one such in which the name of Mahomet is adorned with garlands of tulips and carnations painted in vivid colours. Still more precious was the silky paper of the Persians, powdered with gold and silver dust, whereon were painted rare illuminations, while the whole book was perfumed with attar of roses or essence of sandal-wood.

Of the demand for writing materials one may form some faint notion from the vast MSS. libraries of which records have been preserved, as having been collected by the Caliphs, both of the east and west, the former in Bagdad-the latter in Andalusia-where there were eighty great public libraries, besides that vast one at Cordova. We also hear of private libraries, such as that of a physician, who declined an invitation from the Sultan of Bokhara, because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. If all the physicians of Bagdad were equally literary, the city could scarcely have contained their books, as we hear that the medical brotherhood numbered eight hundred and sixty licensed practitioners.

We next passed by fertile ground, marking where the influence of the precious Nile waters had been. On every small hillock is invariably perched a native village, a mere cluster of square, flat-roofed, mud huts, built with unbaked bricks, dried in the sun, and perhaps whitewashed, and covered with green leaves, cucumbers, and gourds. As soon as the inundations commence, they become a refuge for all manner of terrified reptiles; legions of ants, cockroaches, and lizards; scorpions, toads, centipedes, snakes, all come in swarms to share the homes of the luckless villagers. Should the inundation be a few degrees higher than usual, the chances are that half the huts will resolve themselves into their pristine mud, and produce a soil more fertile than what Father Nile himself bestows.

I believe that in this "land of Egypt, where there is no rain," the heavy dews in great measure supply the lack, and when the Arabs wish to raise a plantation of young date palms, they frequently plant the young tree in an earthenware jar, thus keeping a cool hollow place round its tender roots, where the dew may collect. Of course, VOL. CCLIII. NO. 1821.

T

however, every such group of palms in the arid desert is a sure sign of water beneath the surface, and you may be certain that here the people have digged themselves a well, beside which they and their flocks may rest.

These Eastern wells are perpetual reminders of scriptural scenes; indeed, at every turn we come on countless illustrations of long known words, till one by one becomes associated with some special scene and place, forming themselves into mental pictures.

The marriage processions; the funeral at the gate of the city, when the uncoffined dead lies on the open bier, whence you almost fancy he might sit up and speak; the groups that continually pass you—a mother and child riding an ass or a mule, while the father walks carefully beside it; oftener the patient little beast carries some stately Oriental in flowing raiment, while his attendants bear long branches of palm or reeds or green sugar-cane. We saw many such groups on this very morning, and we read the gospel telling of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, and the lessons which speak of the "cottage in a vineyard," and "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” just as we were actually whirling past them. We saw the same curious lonely watch-towers in every corner of the Indian fields.

Every here and there we saw the old threshing floors, simply smooth dried mud, whereon the sheaves are laid, and the unmuzzled oxen tread out the corn, dragging a sort of roller. Then the grain is shaken against the wind and so winnowed, the chaff being blown away. The two women grinding at the mill is a sight of perpetual recurrence—a little hand mill something like that used in the Western Isles. Another verse which quickly explains itself is that of “take up thy bed and walk "-the bed being generally the covering which acts as a heavy blanket cloak throughout the day, keeping out the sun's rays as effectually as the night dews. This was that raiment which the Jews were forbidden to detain after sundown, if they took it in pledge from their poor brother, else "wherein should he sleep?" The flat-roofed houses, where at sunrise and sunset you see the people kneeling with their faces towards Mecca or towards Jerusalem, are also suggestive. So are even the piles of broken crockery thrown out on these same roofs, where all day long the doves "lie among the pots" cooing, nestling, and fluttering until sunset, when they rise up like a cloud, and their wings gleam like silver, and their feathers like gold, in the clear pure light of the after-glow.

The runners who clear the road before great men shout some words equivalent to "Prepare ye the way"; and some years ago, when the royal guests of the Khedive were to be taken from Cairo