CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY WiLLARD FiSKE Endowment All books are subject to recall after two weeks Olln/Kroch Library DATE DUE Cornell University Library DT 54.B86 Letters f rorn Egypt and _ Syria _/ ^ 3 1924 028 700 163 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028700163 LETTERS EGYPT AND SYRIA, BY THE LiTE WILLIAM AENOLD ^ROMTIELD, M.D., r.L.s., i&C. FEINTED FOE PEIVATE CIECULATION ONLY. LONDON. P\. Vh'-\% • ' i tondou ! WiiLiAK PAMPtiTf, 45, Frith street, Solio. M PEEFATOKY NOTE. The letters which compose this volume, are the unstudied communications of a Brother to a Sister — written for no other eye than hers, and printed solely with the hope of affording gratification to those by whom the character and talents of the lamented writer were well known. There are some among his friends, more devoted to antiquarian pursuits than himself, who may not concur in many opinions which he has expressed concerning Egyptian antiquities ; but these, being his own convictions, which he was too candid to conceal, can be perused only with kind and generous feelings. The letters, written amidst the inconveniences and hindrances of Eastern travel, contain, with a few notes appended to them, all that remaias of the writer's descriptions of his journeyings in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, until within a few days of his arrival at Damascus, where it pleased God that they should terminate with his life. r U PRINCIPAL CONTENTS OP THE LETTERS. LETTER I. PAGE. Voyage to Gibraltar 1—3 The Eock and To-wn 4—5 Malta— the Lazaretto 8—13 Harbour of Alexandria 14—15 LETTER II. Alexandria — scenes and sounds in — Nile water cisterns 17—18 The Date Palm 19 The City — its dilapidations and dogs 20—21 Pompe/s Pillar 22 The English Church 23 Local Mortality — its causes .... 25 LETTER ni. Passage from Alexandria to Cairo 27 Mahmoudieh Canal 27—28 Landing a Passenger 28 Khereddin Pasha 29—30 Population and sombre scenery of Delta 30—32 Cairo — Shepherd's British Hotel 33 The nirning footmen, I. Kings, 18—46 38 The donkey and camel — the streets 36—39 LETTER IV. Route from Cairo to the Pyramids of Ghizeh 40—43 Site and structure of the Pyramids 44—47 Perpendicular appearance of on a near view 47 Ascent of Cheops 48 View of the Nile VaUey from Cheops . 49 Arab race upon the Pyramids .... 50 Interior and passages in Cheops .... 51—53 Cephrenes and its court . . 54 Belzoni and Vyse Pyramids 55 Importunity of Arab guides 53—54 The Sphinx 55—56 viii. CONTENTS OF LETTERS. LETTER V. PAGE. Cairo — Preparations for voyage up the Nile . 57 Valuable Library of the Egyptian Society . 58 Visit to mosques 58 Christians of both sexes admitted . . • • 59 Note of Lithograph of the Great Pyramid . 60 LETTER VI. On the Nile— the boat and crew .... 61 The Barrage 62—63 Rhoda— the locality of Exodus, 2. 1—9. 64 Villagers and dovecotes 65—66 The British in Egypt 66 Accident to Mr. Lakes 67—68 Plague of flies, &c 68 LETTER VII. Winter frost and ice at Rhodah, latitude 28° 70 Sugar factories at Miaieh 70—71 Seven days forced labour 71 Modern Egypt according to prophecy 71 Steam engines, &o. on the Nile . 71 Manfalout— an Egyptian boy 73 Arnout soldiery .... 74 Ameen and his brother 75 Limestone barrier of the Nile valley 75 Jackals, and vegetation of valley 76 Universal brown hue of Egypt 77-78 Siout — manufacture of pipe bowls at 79 Sepulchral excavations on western cliffs 79 Visit to the Siout Bazaars 80 LETTER Vin. Ekhmein, December 12th. Coldness and force of the n orth wind ........ 81—82 The darrabatakako ...... 81 Girgeh 83 Autique coins, &c. on sale 84 The Doum Palm, first seen ..... 85 Scenery of Nile valley ...... 86 Crocodiles seen 87—88 CONTENTS OF LETTERS. ix. LETTER IX, Kenneh Scarcity of plants in seed . Berber songs to the drum . LETTER X, Kenneh — scenery of the Nile Guinea — com harvest . Products of the valley Manufacture and rafts of Gullahs Date groves .... Temple of Dendereh . Economical arrangements of Nile boat Luxor — coldness of the night and dawn LETTER XI. Luxor — its obelisk, hovels and colossi . . ^ . Dendereh and Luxor compared . . Rude and primitive character of buildings at Karnak . Enthusiasm in description equals untruth Critique on popular views of the zoology and vegetation of the Nile LETTER XII. Tropic passed at K.alabshee .... Native love of country .... Products of the land of Gush : Khenna, &c. Characteristics of local population First cataract . ..... Notes on drying plants .... Contrast between cultivated and native plants Subtropical or midland European flora . Birds and insects mostly akin to British Coldness of morning and evening, and its cause Desert views from the boat Remarkable proof of atmospheric dryness Korosko — the depot of caravans for Cairo . LETTER XIII. Caravan journey from Wady Half eh Low morning temperature of the desert Effects of scorpion sting .... PAGE. 89 91 92 93 94 95 96—97 98 99—100 100 102 103 104—105 106 107 108—109 109 110 111 111—112 112 114—115 114 115 117 117—118 CONTENTS OF LETTERS. Colossal statues — Isle of Argo A soft fall after a hard ride . Camel riding — its advantages Napata, the city of Candace, Acts viii. 27 Pyramids of Neuri and their porches Nights under the open sky . Table of temperature at uoon Metummeh ...... Khartoun — welcome at . . . Christian temple — ruins at Gebel al Gazal Sketch of the birds of Soudan Plants of ditto Effects of camel-riding on linen . LETTER XIV. Reflections on the poverty of the Nubian peasantry Security of property .... Hippopotami seen above Berber . The crocodile more fearful than formidable LETTER XV. Return voyage to Cairo Passage from Khartoun to Berber Pyramids of Meroe lUness of Mr. Lakes . Arab doctor's treatment of him . His death and interment Friendly aid of Coptic christians, &o. Merchant adventurers a degraded class Respectability of British residents Private society at Khartoun Turkish morality ... Comfortless death of Mr. M. on the desert Privations and desolation on the desert Reservoir of rain water Description and comfort of the zemmzemeer Scanty and inferior supply of food LETTER XVI. Descent of the first cataract Ruins of Komoomba — PhUce PAGE. 118 119 130 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 -5—6 137 138—9 139 140 140 141 142 143—144 145 145 • 146 149 150 133. CONTENTS OF LETTERS. xl. i PAGE. - The British flag a sanctuary for conscripts . 151 I Plans for the tour in Syria — I LETTER XVII. 1: Temperature in north wind and upon water . 153 I Sand storms and their causes .... 154 i Zobah or Sand pillar — 6 Occasional storms of rain — • Display of meteors — E Factory chimneys and obelisks .... 155 [ TheGalliode 156 li Ruins of Medinet Habou 156-7 - The Memnonium 157 li The vocal Memnon 158 Tombs in Theban mountains .... 159 J Critique on Egyptian architecture and painting . 160 1 Sober estimate of the latter .... 161—3 I, Historical value of the tombs .... 163 f Inscriptions of visitors — Prospect from Theban mountains 164 Grottoes of Assaseef — Karnak by moonlight 165-6 Second visit to Dendereh 167 ' Salutary effects of radiation of heat by night 168 Progressive temperature from sunrise to sunrise . 169 ' ElBahr 170 Prevailing dulness of sky and land 171—2 '' LETTER XV m. ' Erequency of eye disease 173 Desert Arabs free from it 173—174 Deficient supply of animal food 175—8 ' Cattle of Nubia and Egypt 176 ^ The water Buffaloe — - Endurance of heat by cattle .... 177 ' Compulsion of donkeys to drink .... — ' Fruits of Lower Egypt 179 Sycomore a doubtful native 180 Fulfilment of Isaiah xix. 6. 7 181 Scarcity of aquatic plants in Egypt — Awful evidence of the spoilers of Egypt 182 Xll. CONTENTS OF LETTERS. LETTER XIX. Ingratitude of Arab and Berber races . Improvements in Cairo Moslem respect for Protestant consistency LETTER XX. Journey from Cairo to Suez Tomb of Malek Adel Station bouses Solitary tree Desert plants Peculiar donkey shoe Loss of one, without means of supply Night rencontres with camels "Wayside skeletons of ditto . Refreshing influence of north wind by day . Mirage, and real blue line of Red Sea . Suez, a night on board the Akbar . Considerations upon Israel's passage of Red Sea Tradition and modern opinion — Klysma Saliue deposits on soil around Suez Return journey to Cairo .... Deception of a sick child — mirage Excursion to Toorah Quarries Eiokleness and distrustfuLiess of Arabs . Resulting from the uncertain value and great variety of Arab currency . Facts on scarcity of money Hatching-ovens . Memphis and its debris Pyramids of Saocareh . Their structure . Ibis mummy pits Ealse pyramid in Upper Egypt Visit to Nilometer at Rlioda LETTER XXI. Excursion to On . Scenery around Cairo . Tombs of Mamlouk Kings PAGE. 183 184 185 186—7 187 188 189 190 191 193-3 193-4 195 196 197 197 197—8 198—9 200—1 301 202 202 303 304 304 305 305 306 CONTJENTS OF LETTERS. xm. of the Palaces of Abbas Pasha . . . Porced labour on his works . Blindness and squinting prevalent Temperature of the season . Obelisk at On Desert border the site of ancient cities Popular contempt of the Pharoahs Identity of Balsam of Mecca and Storax Sycomore of Holy Pamily at Matereeh . Garden at Shoobra, and mode of irrigation Egyptian fruits, trees, and shrubs ; Khenaa leaves, Fruits — deficient cultivation of . Apricots, Mishmush, &c. . Variable breadth of cultivation on the banks Petrified forest Rigid abstiaence of Arabs during Ramadan Serpent charms witnessed and vindicated Singular charm against a serpent's bite LETTER XXII. Voyage to the Mediterranean Ramadan, the traveller's woe Scenery between Cairo and Damietta . Ruins of Zel Basta .... Mounds at Seminood .... Violent overthrow of Egyptian monuments Mansoureh Swimming Snake .... Damietta — its vicinity .... Miserable lodging there Visit to Lake Menzaleh Accident, and barber surgeon Causes of lakes of Delta Pield and ruins of Zoan Roman remains ..... Ineffectual search for Papyrus LETTER XXni. The Bougaz ElEsbeh Nile PAGE. 207 307 308 209 209 309—10 310 210—11 211 of 312—13 214—15 215—16 216—17 217 217—20 221 231—3 222-3—7 333 324 234—5 335 225—8 226—7 228—9 229—280 331 332—3 235 236—8—243 . 239—240 xiv. CONTENTS OF LETTERS. PAGE. Scanty flora of rice marslies . . . ■ 241 The "brighter side of hardship . 241—242 Poriner cultivation of inundated lands 242 Lodgings among rice bags . 243 The Bougaz passed 244 Retrospect of Egyptian travel 244—5 Voyage to Jaffa — Hungarian refugee 245 LETTER XXIV. Lazaretto — Dr. Kyat 246-8 Simon the tanner's house .... 248 Site, gardens and produce of Jaffa . 249—50 LETTER XXV. Journey to Jerusalem — Ramlah . 251 Summer camps of the Bishop &c. 252 English church at Jerusalem Visit to Bethlehem ..... 253 LETTER XXVI. Sketch of journey to Beyrout 254 Temperature and climate .... 255 Garden cultivation of surrounding country 256 257 Memorandum upon Notes .... NOTES EOR LETTERS. Excursion to Jericho and Dead Sea 258 The Quarantana .... 259 The Jordan .... Dead Sea, and water-fowl upon it Plants on the shores ... 260 Ascent to Mar Saba ... Engedi — heights of ... . 261 The Kedi-on 262 The Convent of Mar Saba . Excursion to Hebron .... 263 Rachael's tomb, &c. . Pools of Solomon .... 264 CONTENTS OF LETTERS. xv. !l page. Paved road iato Hebron 264 i- OakofMamre — , Hebron still Kiijath Arba — ■ ; Snow of 1850 in Holy Land 265 Local antiquities and population of Hebron ... — . ij Glass works — . ; Jermalem to Beyrout 266 Nablous, Mount Ebal, &o — Samaritans — ■ '■ Sebaste 267 Date Palm at Gennia — ■ '■' Esdraelon — Nazareth . — Traditional period of Joseph's residence in Egypt, &c. . — Fair maidens and foul state of Nazareth . . . 268 Mount Tabor — its vegetation, &o — Mount Carmel 268—270 Gaiffa 269 EKjah'scave 270 Acre — Tyre 271 Sidon — local fertility, and export trade ... — Distant view of Lebanon 272 Preface to Extracts 273 Letters of Rev. James Bamett 274 Ditto Mr. George Moore 278 Postscript 280 XVll. BEIEF MEMOIR THE AUTHOR, William Arnold Bromfield, m.d., f.l.s., was born in 1801 at Boldre in the New Forest In Hampshire . in which neighbourhood, at Hey wood, his family had long formerly resided. His father was the Eev. John Arnold Bromfieldj m.a., and Fellow of New College, Oxford ; his mother was Anne, the youngest daughter of Sir Henry T. Gott, of Newland in Buckinghamshire. Mr. Bromfield had been compelled by ill health to resign his living of Market Weston in Suffolk for the benefit of a warmer cHmate, and he died in the same year which gave birth to his son. In his childhoodj as throughout after life, Dr. Bromfield was remarkable for sweetness of temper, and intelligence, taking great delight in illustrations of natural history, and in mechanics. One who was much his companion at that age, well remembers that when only five or six, he stole away from the childish sports of the day, to watch some workmen who were This short notice is gathered from a paper by Sie Wiiiiam J. HooKEB, K.H., published in the " Kew Oarden Miscellany," for December, 1851, and from another of the same date, contributed by Db. BelI/ Salteb to the " Fhytologist." XVlll. MEMOIR OF mending a pump, eagerly and attentively scrutinizing their proceedings, and ready even then, as afterwards, to seize every opportunity of gaining information. At about eleven years old, he was confided to the care of the Rev, Dr. Knox of Tunbridge for two years, and during that period, he received much notice and kind- ness from the Eev. Dr. Cartwright,* who lived in the neighbourhood, and who loved to encourage the boy's taste for the mechanical arts, in which he was himself no mean proficient. The rest of his school life was passed under Dr. Nicholas of Ealing, and he was after- wards placed with a clergyman, the Eev. John Phipps, in Warwickshire. At this time he took especial pleasure in chemistry, and acquired so much knowledge of the science, that when the choice of a profession was pro- posed to him, he was urgent that this pursuit should be made available for the purpose. Accordingly in 1821, he became an inmate and favourite of the family of Dr. Thomson, the distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. Subsequently, he at- tended the medical curriculum in the college, but he still continued an ardent pupil In Dr. Thomson's public and private classes. At the end of two years he took his degree in medicine. He does not appear to have shewn any particular bias for the study of botany until the time of his residence in Glasgow, when botanical excursions, (especially a short tour in the Highlands, to the remembrance of which he often recurred with oreat pleasure), rather than the botanical lectures of the college, induced him to make Botany henceforth the chief study of his life. The well known inventor of the Spinning Jenny, &c. DR. BROMFIELD. In 1826 he left Scotland, and soon afterwards com- menced travelling in Germany, France, and Italy, returning to England in 1830. Private letters to his own family shovsr how profitably he had passed his time, and how much he had stored his mind on all subjects connected with natural history. Soon after his return, he lost his excellent and affec- tionate mother, and from that period he resided with his sister at Hastings, Southampton, and finally at Ryde in the Isle of Wight; which locality, with Hampshire, formed the principal, and very successful field of his botanical labours. His " Notes and Observations on some of the rarer British Plants growing wild in Hamp- shire," published in a series of papers in the third volume of Mr. Newman's " Phytologist," evince great accuracy, diligence, and research, and extensive reading of aU works English or foreign, which could in any degree illustrate the subject. He says, with great truth, at the commencement of his communication, " In pre- senting the readers of the Phytologist with the following list of Hampshire plants, my object has been to promote our knowledge of the geographical distribution of the species in Britain ; which important branch of botany Is now, through the Impulse happily given to it by the labours of Mr. H. C. Watson, beginning to receive its due share of attention in this country, and the time is gone by, when such catalogues were viewed, and their utility measured, by their fitness to communicate mere varieties to the collector." That essay would be well worth printing as a separate work. Invaluable to every student of the botany of Hampshire. During his residence at Hyde, Dr. Bromfield gave much attention to the subject of climate, as Indicated by the atmosphere, and deep springs ; nor did he neglect MEMOIR OF the study of mechanics : a working model of a steam engine, constructed under his direction, and to which he had adapted an improvement of his own, bemg left by him, incomplete indeed, but showing both exact and elaborate skill. If the botany of Hampshire generally, claimed a great share of Dr. Bromfield's attention, that of the Isle of Wight, which was his head quarters for the last fourteen years of his life, especially interested him, and he di- rected his energies to the preparation of a Flora of that beautiful locality. So anxious was he to make it perfect, that while others might have deemed two years suffi- cient to investigate the vegetation of so limited a spot, he did not think that at the end of fourteen years * all had been accomplished that ought to be performed ; and thus, advanced as the work was afterwards found to be, and much as had been done by him towards completing a botanico-geographical and geological map of the island, with all the accuracy of that of the Ordnance survey, upon which it was grounded, — under the per- suasion that "another summer's" investigation would be necessary for its completion, the Flora Vectensis, on his departure for Egypt in the autumn of 1850, still remained in manuscript.! He had been unwearied in his researches in every nools and corner of the Isle of Wight, both in the interior, and on the coast, and scarcely a season elapsed in wliicli he was not rewarded by some discovery. Wild, anc cultivated districts were alike explored by him, and his visits, not always allowed at first in a very friendlj * Some deduction may howeTer be made m comsideration of his visit; to America and the West Indies, duniig the time here stated t This work has now been published, accompanied b,- „ „„ t v „ the author, and an excellent map of the island. ^ l'"''""""' ° DR. BROMFIELD. spirit by landlord or tenant, were latterly graciously welcomed by the same individuals, as both his person and pursuits became familiar to the residents in all parts of the island. Often has he been seen by them going forth at early morn, or returning at dewy eve laden vnth his collections ; which for more convenient ex- amination were transferred from the ordinary vascula in which they were packed in the field, to another, so large, that we should hardly be credited if its exact dimensions were given, and which he called his " witness box." In 1842, Dr. Bromfield made an autumnal tour in Ireland. In January 1844, he embarked for the West India Islands, where he remained six months. At Jamaica, he received much kind attention from the Governor, Lord Elgin ; and from Dr. McFadyen the author of the Flora of that island, in whose society he passed much of his time. At Trinidad, he was kindly received by the botanist Lockhart, one of the few survivors of the Congo expedition under Captain Tuckey, and Curator of the Botanic Gardens. In the summer of 1846, he resolved to visit North America, where he made an extensive tour, embarking for that country in July, and not returning to England until the autumn of the following year. How advan- tageously his time was there passed, may, to some extent, be seen in the " London Journal of Botany," in which, at the request of the Editor, he was with difficulty induced to lay before the public some " Notes and Observations on the Botany, Weather, &c., of the United States of America, made during a tour in that country in 1846 and 1847." "An indifferent state of health," he tells us, "rendering a change of scene. MEMOIR OF climate, and occupation, absolutely necessary, I de- termined, towards the middle of 1846, to visit the United States of America, a country I had long wished to see, as well on account of the great moral and political experiments, of which it is the theatre, as of the analogy which its vegetation bears to that of Europe, our own island of Great Britain included." * This in- teresting journey extended from Canada North to New Orleans in the South, and Westward, to St. Louis on the Missouri. Happy would it have been for his friends had Dr. Bromfield's travels terminated with this tour in the "Western world:" but he had long desired to become acquainted with the scenery and productions of the East, and his carefully kept journal of a visit to the Valley of the Nile, &c., which forms the present volume, written in letters to his beloved sister, proves how greatly he was interested in the wonders of Egypt and Nubia, and, as a Christian, in the more deeply affecting scenes of the Holy Land. He embarked for Alexandria in September, 1850, and at Cairo made arrangements for ascending the Nile in company with two naval officers. Lieutenant Pengelly and Mr. Lakes. They proceeded as far as Wadey Halfeh, where,leaving their boat (January 1851 ), they travelled, chiefly on camels, across the desert to Khartoun, at the junction of the Blue and White Niles. This journey, from the time of dieir landing, to their return to their boat, which awaited them at Korosko, was attended with much fatigue, anxiety, and privation ; only two of * Dr Bromfield was not anxious to appear in print at an early period. His first specimen of authorship, as far as we kno^y, „as his valuable account of a newly discovered grass m Britain, the SpaHina AltenMora. Lois., published m the companion to the Botanical Matr-iyinp vnl ii p. 2d-i. 1836. -"J-'gazme, vol. u, DR. BROMFIELD. the three travellers arriving at the latter place : Dr. Bromfield's amiable young friend, Mr. Lakes, having fallen a victim to an eruptive fever ( a disease, probably identical with the small pox ), of which he died, after a few days illness, at Berber. Dr. Bromfield returned to Cairo on the 4th of June, and on the 5th of August left Egypt for Syria, landing at Jaifa on the 8th, and reaching Jerusalem on the 14th.* After visiting the principal places of interest in its neighbour- hood, he quitted the Holy City on September 8th, travelling by Sebaste, Nazareth and Sidon to Beyrout ; from whence his last letter, full of thankfulness for the past, and of hope for the future, was dated, seventeen days only before his earthly journeyings were by the Divine will concluded, and his "spirit returned to God who gave it." An energetic intellect, with large powers of obser- vation, accompanied by the most rigid truthfulness ; an intense regard, for peace ; a conversation sparlding with the liveliest pleasantry ; and very strong affections, con- stituted the character of this most amiable man. The love of truth in every enquiry and experiment, raised him above all imputation of the slightest bias, and added weight to his observations. The same principle guided him in the investigation of the highest of all subjects; while his varied talents and attainments were seen to be influenced by a filial love of God, and by active faith in a Living Eedeemer. * " By tie grace of Grod I arriTed safely in Jerusalem from Jaffa, this 14tli day of August, 1851." Memorandum on the closing leaf of XXIV. APPENDIX. The following list of plants, fruits, &c. mentioned in the letters as indigenous (see p. 210-212), or cul- tivated (p. 210-217), in the Nile valley and upon the deserts around, is added with a view to explain or suggest at least, what species were intended by the writer. It is by no means always easy to determine what a plant or fruit may be, that is recorded in a letter, only by its vulgar or native name; but such a list, however of necessity imperfect, will not be with- out its value ; and brief notes upon some of the trees, &c. will be acceptable to the general reader. A Mem- orandum upon a few of the less familiar plants, mentioned in the Letters and Journal from the Holy Land is added. The native vegetation of the Nile valley, described so graphically in p. 110-112, is of course much modified by the periodical rise and overflow of the river. The Fauna, no less than the Flora of such a district, will, of necessity, obey the peculiar conditions of soil and temperature induced by the annual inundation. Egypt produces very few naturalised plants. The native Flora scarcely exceeds 300 species, of which the deserts yield 250. The enthusiasm of the author of the Letters in his favourite pursuit, led the Arabs to distinguish him by XXV. the expressive title, " Abou Hasheesh" — Father of Grass, p. 128. It is worthy of remark that a kindred lover of plants, David Douglas, whose life was sacrificed in the too assiduous prosecution of botanical researches, wou from the Red men of the American Forest the familiar name of the " Man of Grass." Sadly true of these devoted men, but in another sense, have both titles proved, Is. xl. 7: but our momentary sadness, and their eternal song happily concur together ; for of both we have hope, that they have now found rest in Jesus, and gather and enjoy the fruit of that Tree of Life — the Plant of renown, in the midst of the paradise of their God — (Eev. ii. 7). XXVI. I. Memorandum of Plants, §'c. mentioned in the Letters, loith references to the principal notice of them. PAGE. A.CACIA ARABicA, W. nilotica Delil. "Sant," . 76,83^93 Lebbeck. W 21, 212 Vera. W. Gum arabic tree, The « Sant " or " Sont " yields a Lard wood, useful in turnery and cabinet work : rhe Arabians employ it in making charcoal ; the pods are used for tanning. (See Sant.) Apples, Pyrus mains, L Apricot, Prunus armeniaca, L. Imported dry or in rolled cakes from Syria. AuicA, Areca catechu, W. The Betel nut. . Balm of Gilead, Styrax officinale. L. Storax ? Banana. Musa sapientum, L Barley. Hordeum vulgare, L Bean. Vicia faba, L. Pabia vulgaris. Miller. Bean, French, Dolichos Lubia or Lahlab, W. or Phaseolus vulgaris, W. Cabbage, Brassica oleraoea, L Carmieh, Carmiffi, Forskhael Flor. Egypt: Alcea ficifolia, L. Althaea ficifolia, Cav. Carrot, Daucus Carota, L. ... Cassia fistdla, L Castor oil plant. Ricinus communis, L. Cauliflower, Brassica oleracea, L. var: Botrytis Will Chick Pea. Cicer arietinum, L 76 178 83, 179 19 210 19, 216 91 43 42 65 223 76 212 21 92 92 XXVll. Cloveh. Trifolium Alexandnnum, .... The plant intended is doubtful. Tliree genera of Leg-umincsae yield plants called Clover in Egypt, — Trifolium Alexandrinum, Latliyrus sativus, and Trigonella foenum graicum. Tkese are severally named Ly the Arabs — Bersim, Gilban, and Helbek. Cocoas. "Kulkas," Forsk. Colocasia esculenta, Scbott, or Arum esculentum. L. Egyptian Arum, Cocoa nut. Cocos nucifera, L Coleseed. Brassica oleifera, Maench. var. B. Napus, CoLEWOBT. Brassica oleracea, L Convolvulus — described as a woody tiailing- species, with purple llowers and quinate leaves, cultivated in Cairo, and wild in iNubia: is it Ipomcea palmata, Forsk. I. cairica, Sweet, the " Ollaech" or " Climber" of the Arabs ? adorning the loftiest trees and reeds with its lovely purple flowers. Forsk Cotton. Gossypium herbaceum, L. . . . CoKiANDER. Coriandrum sativum, L. . . . CucuMis Chata or Chate. W. a hairy Melon? Quatte, Arab : probably intended sometimes by the word Melon, bemg the common popular fruit of Egypt. Cyanus Nelumbo, Smith, (see Nelumbium.) 105, Cynodon Dactylon, Pers. Creeping- Cynodon. . Date. Phoenix dactylifera, L. . . 19, 31, Forty-six varieties of the Date are culti- vated in N. Africa, varying- in form, season, and use, for immediate consumption, or as a dried fruit. Journal of Bot. vol. ii, No. 23. page. 76 109 19 92 76 213 108 76,92 180—1 21 94, 216 XXVIU. PAGE BouM Palm. Cuoifera Thebaica, Delil. Hyphoene coiiacea. Goertner 85, 86, 94, 167 D'hourra, Holcus Sorghum, L 175, 223 DuRANTA ELLisii, W. Native of the West Indies. 213 Flax, Linum usitatissimum, L 223 Fennel. Anethum foeniculum, L 76 French Bean. Dolichos Lubia, W. or Phaseolus vulgaris, W ... 92 FiGi. Figl Eaplianus sativus, L. var. See Herodotus, Z. 5, 125 92 Fig. Ficus carica, L. (small var: p. 19 ) 179, 213, note. Garlic. Allium sativum. L 42 Gimmay. Ficus sycomorus. L 179, &c. Gourds. Cucurbita lagenaria. Sec. W. . . 92 Grape. Vitis vinifera, L. Native of Armenia, . 20, 214 Guinea corn. Sorghum cernuum. W. brought fi-om Egypt as " .Joseph's Wheat ;" . 66, 92 Halfeh grass. Poa cynosuroides, Retz, . . 105, 167 Henna, Henneh, Khenneh. Lawsonia spinosa, and L. inermis, L. Vars. of L. alba. Lam. . 212 Hibiscus esculentus (the Ochis) L. . . . 92 HoLCUS d'hourra ; H. durra — Forsk : Sorghum vulgare Pers. Nubian breadstuff. . . . 175, 223 Hyoscyamus Datar, Forsk : H. muticus, L . 187 Indiqofera argentea. L 92 Jasminum officinale, L. J revolutum, Sims. . 213 Khenneh, (see Henna), 109 Khisne, (see Cassia), Leek, Alhum Porrum. L , . 42 Lebbek, (see Acacia Lehbek), 21, 212 Lentil. Ervum lens, L. ; red pottage of, . . 42, 65 Lemon, Citrus Limonum, Risso. .... 212 Lettuce, Lactuca sativa, L. (cultivated as an oil plant), 42 Lime, Citrus Liraetta, Risso, Lupins, Liipinus Termis, Forsk, Maize, Zea Mays, W Mallows, Malva rotundifolia, L. Marrow (Veg-etable), Cucurbita succada? of C. oviformip, W. . . Meloleyeh, Corchorns olitorius, L. Melon, Cucumis Melo, W — — — , (Water), Cucufbita Citrullus, L. MuLBERRT, Morus alba, and nigra, L. . Myrtle, Myrtus communis, L. Nabr, Nebr, Nebbek, Rhamnus Napeca, Forsk, 31 ; Zizyphus Sjiina Christi, W. . 212, Nelumbium speciosum, W. ; Cyamus Nelumbo, L. — Sacred Bean of India . . . 105, NicoTiANA rustica and Tabacum, L. . ^ OcHis, Hibiscus esculentus, L OcHRAS, Lathyrus ocbrus, Dec. Pisum Ochrus, L. OcHROES, Abelmoschus esculentus. Medic, a fa- vourite ingredient in soup. (See Hibiscus) Oleander, Nerium Oleander, W Olive, Olea Europea, W. Orange, Citrus Aurantium, Risso, . . . . Onion, Allium Cepa, L Papyrus, P. antiquorum, Lk., Peach, Amygdalus Persica, L. . . . . Pear, Pja-us communis, L. .... Pear, (Prickly), Opuntia vulgaris. Mill. Cactus opuntia, L. Peas, Pisum arvense, L Plum, (a small round plum), Prunus domestica, W, Pomegranate, Punica Granatum, L. . . . Poplar, Populus alba, L Potato, Convolvulus Batatas, W. ? or Solanum tuberosum W PAGE. 212 92 32 92 92 92 42, 214 92, 214 212 212 216, 270 180, 181 32 92 76 199 212 41 21 3,96 42 113 181 235 214 215 21 216 76 214 216 212 m PAGE. RrcE, Oryza sativa, W 65, 181, 229, 232 RrciNus Palma Chhisti, R. coramunis, W. . 21 Rose, Rosa centifolia, L. ? ? 212 Sant, or SoNT, Mimosa Nilotica, L. ; Acncia Nilo- tica, Delil. A grove of this tree, mentioned by Strabo, is still seen above Mempbis. (See Acacia). Salsola, 1 „ . , , „ , } Species doubtful 232 Salicornia, ) Santolina, S- fragranti.'ssima, W., Lavender cotton 187 Senna, Cas.'ia Senna, W., and C. orientalis, W. . 109 Sessaban, Sesbania Egyptiaca, Pers. . . . 213 Sessama, Sesamum orientale, L. . . . Sugarcane, Saccbarum Oflicinanim, W. „ Factory and Plantation of, . . . 71 Sycomore, Ficus sycomorus, L. The wood serves in the construction of water-wheels and was employed of old for chairs, coiSps, idols, &c 170, 179, 180, 210, &c. Tamarisk, Tamarix gallica ? L. "Tarfa-" „ T. orientalis, Forsk. ; yields a hard wood for tool handles. „ T. Africana, Poir. These three species occupy a low damp soil in Egypt, and the beds of torrents. 21, 93, 232, 235 Tobacco, Nicotianarustica, L 82 „ N. Tabacum, L. Tomato, Solanum lycopersicum, L. Lycopersicuni esculentum. Mill Willow, Salix babylonica, L. chiefly, Wheat, Triticum iestivum, L. ; all the varieties in Egypt are bearded. . . . .92, 108, 123 ZizYPHUS LOTUS, W. Lote tree, food of the Lo(o pbagi, (See Nabr.) 212, 216 92 212 XXXI. 11. Memorandum upon the less familiar Plants mentioned in the Letters, §•«. from the Holy Land. Abraham's Tree, Gen. xviii. 1-8. Two opinions are held upon this tree. ?64— 5 1. That it was an Oak ; and according to Hillerus, Querciis Esculus Linn, (see Hierophyticon, &c.) the wood of an oak and acorns were brought from Marare by the late Bishop Alexander, with the remark — " This is tbe only tree now to be seen there." Oaks were employed for timber in the Holy Land, in the time of King- Solomon ; oaken planks having been used in the Temple, according to Rabbinical testimony. " The plain of Mamre" (Gen. xviii. i.) signifies probably " the Oali grove." 2. That it was the Terebinth, Pistacia Terebinthus, Linn. This is the prevailing opinion. Several eminent authors mention a tree of this species near Hebron as of remarkable antiquity : and Eusebius, and, I believe, Jerome, distinctly call it Ahrahain's Tree. See Joseph, de Bell. 1. 4. c. 7. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, and Jerome in Sozomen Hist. (1. ii. c. 4). The Terebinth was much used as a landmark, on account of its longevity. (See Gen. xxxv. 4; Jud. vi. 11; 1 Chron. x. 12). Dr. Bromfield, in the note on Abraham's Tree, has referred to this opinion; but his remark affords no clue to the tree intended in Gen. xviii. 1 and 8. Camphire. Cant. i. 14 260 The Henna of the Arabians, Lawsonia Alba. Linn. No gift is more pleasing to women than a cluster of Hernia flowers; the perfume of the blossoms being most grateful. With the powdered leaves, the nails of xxxu. the hands, the feet, and sometimes the hair are dyed a yellow brown, which is considered a becoming orna- ment to the person. (Dent. xxi. 12). Caeob. (Luke XV. 16 j Matt. iii. 4?) . . . 268—9 Ceratonia siliqua Linn ; reputed in the Holy Land to have been the food of John the Baptist, and vulgarly called St. John's Bread. It is used much by the poor and for feeding cattle. The insect locust being available for food part only of the year, it is not improbable that the Carob supplied the Baptist's rude diet. Cotton, Sea Island 249 Gossj'pium herbaceum. Willd. G. barbadense is mostly cultivated in the West Indies ; but G. arboreum and G. herbaceum, Willd. in the East. CuRANA Trees. Sidon 271 Icica altissima Aubl., a native of Guiana; yeilding a useful and highly aromatic cedarwood ; cultivated at Sidon ? Lentils. Probably the ti-ee intended is the Lentisc, 268 Pistacia Lentiscus Linn., the Terebinth. No tree answers to the name Lentil ; the pulse, so called, being the seed of Ervum Lens. Linn. Reeds. Arundo Donax Linn 260 With a rod of this plant (it is supposed) the soldiers smote the Saviour, and also presented the hyssop dipped in vinegar to his mouth. John xix. 28 ; Matt. XXV. 11 — 48. GERARD SMITH. ERRATA ET CORRIGENDA. Page 23— line 17, for " Albas Pasha" read " Abbas Pasha." 58 .^ 13, for " Khodes gardens" read '• Bhoda gardens." 75 ... 23,/or "jetting out" read "jutting out." 149 ... 3, i««er<"that of," 6e/b»-e"India." 160 ... 24:, for "the preyailing," read "a prevailing charac- teristic." 161 ... 1, /or "required," reod "requiring." 163 ... 13, for " Burckhartd." read " Burckhardt." 176 ... 28, for" laying,' ' read " lying." 248 ... 19, /or " modern Joppa," reod " modem Jaffa." (Letter I.) SxjLTAN Steamer, at Sea, between Cape St. Vincent and Gibraltar, October 4th, 1850. My dear E- JCiARLT to-morrow we shall probably be at Gibraltar, and as the vessel will remain for a few hours only to coal before continuing her course to Malta, but little time will be afforded for going ashore, and none left for writing to England. The delightfully calm and now sunny weather enables me to sit down and give you a short account of our progress since we left Southampton, which, till to day, the rough state of the sea would not permit me to do, and even now, the vibratioQ of the vessel, as you will perceive, makes writing not the most agreeable or easy task. Our number of passengers altogether amounts to about thu-ty, and we have a very heavy cargo of goods on board. We shall arrive I trust at Malta on Wed- nesday or Thursday, when I must put myself in LETTERS OF quarantine for three days, until the Government steamer is ready to take me and the Indian passengers to Alexandria, on arriving at which place, we shall be admitted without delay to pratique, which would not be the case, if we had communicated or gone ashore at Malta. We had very heavy weather in crossing the Bay of Biscay, a great deal of sea, and a constantly over-cast sky of whity-hrown, with occasional rain and fog, from which we did not emerge until this morning, in about the latitude of Cape St. Vincent. Nothing could be more dull and dreary than the aspect of sea and sky as we ran down the coasts of Spain and Portugal, of which, from the thickness of the weather we had only oc- casional glimpses, and very bleak and iron-bound they appeared, but lofty and picturesque, reminding me (I speak of the small range of coast-hne off Cape Fin- isterre), of the coast of Ireland near Cape Clear, wild and rocky In the extreme. I was far from comfortable all Tuesday and Wed- nesday, but I have now found my sea-legs and appetite, and all other nautical requisites; the time passes but slowly however, even with my own books, and a very nice little library on board. The weather is delightfully warm and sunny, and all the ladles have come forth from their hiding places, and are enjoying themselves on deck, singing Italian airs to a piano. Our worthy Captain ia a great favourite with all on board, his round face glowing with such a high colour and good humour, that it does one's heart good to look at him. The table is not so luxurious and profuse as on board the West India packets, but what is much better. It Is good, plain and substantial, with wine (port and sherry), and spirits included ; champagne twice a week. We have plenty W. A. BROMFTELD.— No. 1. of room, and the passengers are all disposed to be -sociable and pleased with each other, a state of things which can hardly be otherwise with such a Captain to preside over our little society. Head winds retarded our progress down channel, and afterwards the wind and heavy sea were not in favour of quick progress ; on the whole however, we have done very fairly, and our passage hitherto cannot be con- sidered a bad one, although somewhat long. I am told that the passage from Southampton to Gibraltar has been made by the "Sultan" in four days and twenty hours, more than once ; the distance is 1142 miles nau- tical. I have just heard that there is great probability that the quarantine betwixt Malta and Alexandria has been suspended, and that vessels vvdll be at once admitted to pratique at the latter place, if they can procure a clean bill of health from the former ; if this should prove true, there will be no necessity for any of our party putting ourselves in quarantine on arriving at Malta, but we can go quietly on shore to our hotel, undisturbed by the fear of having to expiate the deed in the Lazaretto at Alexandria, for I know not how many days. We cannot be sure of this good report being true, till we arrive at Gibraltar, or even perhaps at Malta ; but the authorities at Gibraltar will probably be apprized of a relaxation of the lately existing quarantine laws to the eastward. The weather to-night is quite warm, so that we can sit with pleasure on deck, and the sky is much clearer than on any previous day ; although by no means what people picture to themselves of the atmosphere of the south of Spain. October 4th, 8 p.m. The sea is calm as a mirror ; our noble vessel making her way fast towards the LETTERS OF entrance of the Strait, with a motion scarcely per- ceptible below. Unfortunately we shall not arrive at Gibraltar by day-light. We have kept so far out to sea, that the coast of Spain and Portugal has been unseen from the deck, but we are to have a splendid view of the Spanish shore to-morrow, and a good glimpse of Algiers. Had the weather been fine and clear, we should have run close along shore a great part of the way from Cape Finisterre to Gibraltar. As we shall remain on shore for several hours, I hope to see a good deal of the place on this first visit, and will do all I can to find out Major H 's tomb in the military burial ground, and report on its state for his sister's information. Gibraltar, October 5th. We arrived here this morn- ing very early, and I was up and on deck at six o'clock, to admire the magnificent view of the Bay and Eock of Gibraltar, which fully came up to, and I may almost say, surpassed the idea I had formed of it. From arriving so early, our supply of coals had been got in sooner than was anticipated, and the Captain announced his intention of starting for Malta at noon instead of at 2 p.m., so that M^e had two hours less for going ashore than we had calculated upon. As a permit for ascending the "Eock" could not be had so early from the town- major's office, I gave up all idea of going to the summit this time, and contented myself with perambulating the lower parts of the Eock and the town, and botanizing along the shore between the new and old towns. How- ever, I gained a very considerable elevation, quite sufficient to give me a perfect view of the glorious panorama of sea and land, in surveying which, I found my telescope a. most invaluable companion. With what raptures would my dear E have looked on the fV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 1. majestic mountains of Spain, and the vast Atlas range on the opposite coast of Africa, lighted up by a bright sun, with the deep blue of the bay beneath ; and how often I wished for her at my side, for there was a dry fresh breeze on the rock that would have made the temperature perfectly supportable, if not almost agree- able to her. The chief defect of the landscape is the want of wood, which gives an air of nakedness and sameness to the mountains, but they are sprinkled with low bushes and tufted plants which render them not wholly devoid of verdure ; whilst the rock itself between the new and old towns is one continued garden. The town is much better built, and far cleaner than I expected ; and the Rock on a more extensive scale than I imagined. Very few wild plants were in flower ; most of them being either quite burnt up, in seed, or not yet in bloom; nevertheless I found a great many curious species I had not before seen growing, and the garden vegetation has almost as much of a tropical aspect as in the West Indies. The town is a very amusing place, from the end- less variety of features and costumes ; I remarked many very handsome Spanish faces, such as we see depicted by the old masters, but numbers had very ordinary ones, although fine black eyes are nearly universal. I shall hope to spend a week or a fortnight at this interesting place on my return ; as yet, I have only an imperfect idea of Gibraltar. We had a splendid view of the back of the rock as we rounded Europa Point, a bare, black precipice, totally devoid of vegetation; and immedi- ately the high mountains of Andalusia came into view, part, I believe, of the Sierra Nevada ; but a slight haze and our distance from them, only rendered their outlines visible, which were very fine. LETTERS OF Sunday, October 6th, (between Gibraltar and Malta). We are now in tbe enjoyment of almost tropical weather, careering over the blue Mediterranean at ten knots an hour, with no wind, but with an uneasy swell, sufficient to affect me in a slight degree when sitting erect below to write, as I am doing now. Divine service has just been performed in the saloon, and the whole ship's crew mustered in their best attire ; a most copious supply of bibles and prayer-books being dis- tributed on the table from a stock kept on board by the " Company." The chief officer acted as reader. One of our most active stewards broke his leg this morning in running up a short ladder from the main to the quarter-deck; the foot having caught in between two of the steps, the bone was snapped across by the impetus acquired. Monday, October 7th. Getting on famously, nine and a half knots an hour. Passed Algiers this morning about seven o'clock, but at too great a distance to distinguish anything on shore ; we have seen merely a glimpse of the African continent since leaving Gibraltar. The uneasy motion of the sea still con- tinues, and there is no wind to keep the ship steady. The thermometer this morning in the Captain's cabin on deck, was 78° at 9 a.m. The weather since we arrived at Gibraltar, has been like our own in the height of summer, with a sky very similar in aspect, that is, streaked, mottled, and partly overspread with fleecy clouds. To-day the atmosphere is less clear. I cannot perceive the slightest increase of depth in the blue tone of the sky since we left Southampton, although we are nearly 300 miles within that sea so renowned, in popular belief, for the azure purity of its heaven. The starlight too is not a whit more brilliant than with us TF. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 1. on ordinary clear nights. The warmth of the climate is already exerting a most beneficial influence on me ; I am in excellent spirits, appetite and digestion perfect ; and only long to escape the tedium of the voyage, which, however I contrive to while away very tolerably. There are I find eleven of us going on to Alexandria, but no one excepting myself, wUl stop in Egypt; the rest are all for Bombay. October 8fh. Much cooler to day, very fine, but a good deal of cloud floating in the sky at one time ; our speed is increased to nearly eleven knots an hour ; the motion of the ship very disagreeable, but no one ill on board. Passed some islands, the largest of which was Galita, all said to be uninhabited, very bare and bleak. Towards evening we neared the coast of Africa, and had a good view of Cape Bona, the highest headland between Gibraltar and Malta. We were not near enough to distinguish any object on shore, and the line of coast though bold, had no particularly foreign or exotic character about it, nor was it invested with that clear transparent atmosphere one hears so much about in the Mediterranean, whose waves however had all the deep azure I remember to have been struck with in 1827. Algiers was sighted in the morning, but at far too great a distance to get even a distinct view of the town. The evening was very clear and calm, but rather cool. We expect to reach Malta to-morrow between 3 and 4 p.m., and, as you may suppose, are extremely anxious to learn our fate, whether it is to quarantine or pratique we are to be admitted. No one will rejoice more than myself to step ashore there, to have a bath, and a cup of tolerable tea or coffee, both of which are scarce luxuries on board packet ships. LETTERS OF Should we be under the necessity of putting our- selves in quarantine, the Lazaretto at Malta is spoken of as by no means uncomfortable quarters, and our term of durance will be past when the over-land mail steamer from Marseilles comes to our relief. It is the being at a place which one is forbidden to ramble over, that makes quarantine in this case so provoking. Our evenings pass off very agreeably, the young ladies being now aU recovered from sea-sickness ; the piano, which is really a very good one, is in constant requisition, and singing and playing while away the time pleasantly. This voyage is the first I have made ia which no cards have been introduced ; and although vnne, spirits, and other beverages are supplied gratis by the " Company," not one of our passengers has indulged in liberal potations. Lights are put out m the saloon at half- past ten, but the floating wick lamps in the sleeping or state rooms, are allowed to bum themselves out, and usually last tUl daylight. October 9th. A most beautiful morning, very clear and moderately warm. Malta is now in sight, ( 10 a.m.) and a few hours will terminate three-fourths of the passage to Alexandria, which Ave expect to reach on the nineteenth. October 10th. Malta Lazaretto. Our hope of being allowed to take pratique without subjecting" ourselves to quarantine at Alexandria has been disappointed, and we were compelled to put ourselves in the latter dis- agreeable position yesterday, on our arrival in the harbour of Valetta, about three o'clock. Our party consists of twelve, all, except myself, going to India. The quarantine buildings stand on a point of the harbour, isolated from the rest of the town ; and consist of ranges of apartments, very lofty, and beautifully W. A. BROMFIELD.— No. 1. clean, white-washed, and with stone floors, and each room is abundantly supplied with water. The only furniture is a chair or two, a rough wash-hand stand and an iron bedstead. As we are not, properly speaking, in quaran- tine, but only in the position of persons not holding communication with an infected place, we are not allowed to have any servant to assist us, because were any one coming off from the town to touch us, we should be immediately in quarantine for the full time required to enable us to take pratique on our arriving at Alexandria, that is, ten or fifteen days at least. We must now perform the most menial offices for ourselves, make our own beds, &c., with a guardian ever watching us, whom, if we were to touch, -we should be obliged to perform full quarantine from that moment. The weather is extremely hot still ; to day, far warmer than any we have had since we left England, with an almost cloudless sky, the rainy season not having commenced. Bedding must be paid for here as an extra, but Captain Brookes, of the " Sultan," with great liberality, has ordered a quantity of mattresses, sheets, and blankets, to be sent to us from the ship, which he will take back on his return from Constantinople. None of us however could get much rest last night from the incessant attacks of mosquitoes ; the only insect annoy- ance we are exposed to here : we can, it is true, have mosquito curtains by paying for them, but the narrow- ness of the beds themselves is another cause of dis- comfort, not to be remedied, and we are fain to put up with our light misfortunes, from which we look forward to be relieved on Sunday by the arrival of the steamer from Marseilles. In our party of twelve, there are only four gentlemen including myself; the rest are ladies. 10 LETTERS OF most of whom are girls, the daughters and nieces of Colonel S ,■ an officer of the Indian army, returning with his wife to Bombay, a pleasing and gentlemanly man. Mr. P , a young cadet going out to join his regiment in India, and Dr. F , are our other as- sociates, and we form quite a sociable and merry party. Our way of living is droll enough, as we must touch nobody, not even the guardian, or the persons who bring us our meals, which are furnished from a trattoria close at hand, the owner of which is himself in pratique. As an instance of the extreme absurdity of the quaran- tine laws — although we are strictly forbidden to come in contact with any person employed in conveying food or messages to us poor prisoners, yet we touch and taste fruit, bread, vegetables, &c., which they have handled, and money is allowed to pass freely between us. October Wth. Another charming day, with a de- licious breeze on the flat stone or stucco roof of our prison house. The ladies have discovered that there are worse inmates than the mosquitoes in our apartments ; but though seriously tormented by the latter, I have not seen the more odious insects in my room. We all slept better last night, but on meeting at breakfast this morning, the fair faces of our female friends bore the appearance of an attack of measles, and my hands and forehead are covered with bites. I endeavoured to exclude the enemy by tying a pocket handkerchref over the whole head and face, and lying completely en- veloped in the upper sheet, but the remedy proved worse than the disease, from tlie heat thus generated, and the hindrance to breathing. The common house-fly swarms about everything eatable, but is not otherwise troublesome ; and I have not observed a single blue- bottle. A harmless myriapole, allied to Scolopendra, caused great disgust to our young Cadet last night, as fr. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 1. 11 it hurried across his bed ; and we saw whilst at tea one of those large spiders so common in Suffolk and at Hampton Court, called daws or cardinals, but our only real annoyance hitherto has been the mosquitoes. Our rooms command a fine view of the town of La Valette and the Quarantine Harbour, and the terrace on the flat roof is extremely spacious. There we pass a great deal of our time after sunset, and there I find great amusement at all times with my telescope, which does service pro bono publico. We are permitted to have a boat, and row about the quarantine harbour, but our limits are rigidly defined, and we cannot enter the great harbour, which I have not yet seen, but suppose that the '' Medina " will go in to take passengers off on Sunday at twelve at noon, when, we are told, we shall be released from our not very irksome confinement. We breakfast at nine, dine at three, have tea at seven, and cheat the mosquitoes as long as we can by remaining on the house-top, upon which fortunately we are not pro- hibited from staying all night, if we think proper, and the temperature then is delicious, nor do the mosquitoes venture so high, at least in any numbers. Our guardian is a good looking Maltese or Italian, more to be pitied than any of us, having nothing to do but to keep guard over us, and to saunter about in the corridor, and on the shore below our castle. The only service he performs is to bring messages oral or written, to place the dishes at meals within reach and yet avoid coming in contact with any of our party. We really (bating the mosquitoes), pass our time of durance very pleasantly, with a brilliant sun ever shining on us, and an exhilarating temperature; and buoyed up with the hope of being within two days from this time winging our way to the land of the Pharoahs, whither we all look forward with impatience to arrive on Thursday next. 12 LETTERS OF Our expences in quarantine will not at the outside amount to more than ten shillings a day for each person, for everything is under Government regulation, and a price fixed. We do not hear of any new cases of cholera in the tovra, excepting a soUtary one of two days back. The view from our windows, verandah, and roof, is very fine, but immeasurably behind that from the Bay and Kock of Gibraltar ; for there is here no very bold scenery, and a great deficiency of shadow in the land- scape owing to the want of trees. There is not the slightest appearance of the rainy season approaching at present, the temperature at this moment, by the ther- mometer on the table at 1, p.m., is 73. The houses of La Valetta are of a yellowish white free-stone, and with perfectly flat roofs. The Government Housa^ and the English Church built by Queen Adelaide, are two of the most conspicuous of the public buildings, besides the walls and fortifications which are mantled with caper-bushes, the branches of which, hang gracefully in thick verdant tresses. The fruits supplied us, here are very indifierent ; the best are grapes, now going out of season, but most of these are thick-skinned and insipid; the peaches very large, hard, and worthless; the only pears we have seen were mellow, but sleepy, as are likewise the apples ; the dried figs are good, pomegranates very poor; melons passably good. Our dining table is adorned with large bouquets of flowers, and we received a present of some this morning, all very inferior to English flowers of the same kind, and consisting of only the few following; white and red China roses, (poor of their kind), sweet scented verbena, heliotrope, and scarlet geranium, each and all of which would be thought very mediocre samples of their varieties with us. I forgot to mention a few dahlias, JV. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 1. 13 ETood in colour, but smaller than with us. It is not probable that these were the choicest productions of the Maltese flower gardens ; yet the two gift bouquets are probably a pretty fair specimen of local cultivation. The potatoes here are excellent, and the growth of the island. October I2th. Another glorious day, after a night of restlessness from our pitiless enemies the mosquitoes, and I am sorry to add, less cleanly, though not more annoying foes. We all look forward to release from prison to-morrow, or on Monday morning at latest. We expect to find it as much warmer at Alexandria, as this place exceeds Gibraltar in that respect; for although in very nearly the same latitude, Malta is surrounded by a sea of higher temperature than the Atlantic, and there is not the same indraught of cool air from the adjacent coasts, or ocean, or from the high mountains of the European or African shores, which keeps Gibraltar comparatively cool. In Malta the hie-hest land I am told is not above five or six hundred feet, and there being no wood, and few trees of any size, the glare and heat from the white rocks must be extreme. Of the city of La Valetta, I can of course say nothing, although so close to the main part of it ; it seems to be well built, and has a very imposing ap- pearance from the water, but it is not so pretty an object as Kyde when seen from the pier-head. Queen Adelaide's new church is, as I have observed the most conspicuous building on this side of the town, and its erection is said to have excited the most violent op- position from the Eomish priesthood, which is extremely bigoted in Malta. Alexandria October I8th. We arrived off this place last night, in the Government steamer "Medina" from Marseilles, and entered the harbour this morning at 14 LETTERS OF sunrise, after an unpleasant but not stormy passage; the very uneasy motion of the vessel affecting every one of the passengers, being compounded of pitching and rolling; the worst kind of motion, and there was hardly any wind. The Medina, commanded as she is, by a Lieutenant in the Navy, exhibits a strange mixture of civil and naval arrangements and usages, with nothing like the order, promptness, and care, which one expects to see on Her Majesty's quarter-deck. We entered the bay of Alexandria under as English a looking sky as one could wish to have to remind one of home ; and at Malta, the night of Sunday when we started was much over-cast, but during the passage the weather was uniformly fine. Picture to yourself our bright summer weather, when the heavens are canopied with detached flocculent masses of white, upon a ground of pale blue, and you have the exact idea of the pre- vailing aspect of the Arabian and Egyptian mackarel sky, which is exactly what I expected to find it, and very nearly that of the tropics. On entering the Harbour of Alexandria, the weather looked very threatening, but cleared ofi^, and became fine and extremely hot all day, with a cool delicious breeze, and fine at night. Judge therefore of my astonishment on rising this morning, to find it pouring with rain, accompanied by occasional claps of thunder, but not very violent : the rain ceased before 10 a.m., and now, (19th at noon), it is both damp and hot, and this makes the mosquitoes very active and troublesome in broad day, which is not often the case : as to flies, I do not find more than in England : not a tithe of the numbers that settled on everything at Malta. We found all the men of war in the harbour decked out with flags as we entered yesterday, it being a great W. A. BROMFIELD.— No. 1. 15 Mahommedan festival ; I believe that of Belram. We saw several magnificent line of battle ships in ap- parently high order and discipline, from which the Turkish ensign, (the crescent and star), waved con- spicuously. The harbour presented a far more animated and crowded appearance than that of Portsmouth, being literally filled with shipping. We were on shore before ten o'clock, and I, who alone of all the party remained at Alexandria, was neither asked for my passport nor compelled to submit to custom-house examination, but drove quietly off" to the hotel, ( Ray's), in the Frank Square, heartily glad to escape from the closeness and confinement of our probationary sojourn at Malta, which had quite ruined, pro tern., the complexions of our lady fellow travellers, three of whom were really very pretty. I have just learned that the Medina leaves this place on Monday with the English mail via Marseilles, so that I must have this dispatch posted without further delay, and must reserve my account of Alexandria for another letter. I enclose five little packets of seeds for Mr. Lawrence, to whom remember me. October 20th. Another wet morning, a very heavy shower for an hour or two, and the great Frank Square in which I lodge, covered with pools, or rather immense puddles, which the heat of the sun raises into vapour, and renders the air extremely damp, giving fresh life and vigour to my friends the mosquitoes. » » * # Believe me, My dear E , Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. 16 LETTERS OF (Letter 11.) Alexandria, October 22nd, 1850. My dear E- JL DISPATCHED my first communication from this place by the Medina steamer yesterday, and I hope it will be safely received by you in about ten or twelve days. This morning I called on the British Consul, Mr. Gilbert, and received from him a kind note from Sir Gardner Willdnson, enclosed - under cover with a second to Dr. Abbot, of Cairo, for whom I have an introductory letter. I delivered yesterday Mr. Fagan's letter to the Eev. James Winder, our Chaplain here, who received me very obligingly. I fancy that here, hospitaHty in our English sense of the word, is not the order of the day, ovdng probably not to any want of that virtue in the British residents, but to the difficulties they Ke under in its exercise, wdth their small estabhsh- ments, and unmanageable Arab servants, from whom punctuaUty is hardly to be expected, and whose sloth is proverbial. jr. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 2. 17 This hotel, (Ray's), on the Frank Square, is really as comfortable as most foreign houses of the kind on the continent of Europe. I have a very large, airy, and lofty bed-room on the second floor, looking on the great square, boarded, and with a wrought iron bedstead, furnished with mosquito curtains of fine muslin, without which a night's rest would be an impossibility; the walls papered, a bad and rather unusual plan in a warm climate, as affording harbour for insects, though it imparts an air of- cheerfulness and comfort to the other- wise bare walls. The French windows are glazed, with green jalousie blinds outside, and chintz window curtains within ; so that in winter, the cold, (which is, I am told much felt at Alexandria, on account of the damp which accompanies it), must be in a great degree excluded. The cuisine is very good: but butcher's meat indifferent, the mutton just tolerable, the beef, I am told, very bad, but this I have not seen yet, and I believe it rarely comes to table : I suspect that in most cases it is buffalo beef, and that I cannot imagine either tender or palatable. I have seen herds of these animals in the streets, and occasionally a few oxen, perhaps of Barbary race, but very different from our British breeds. The Egyptian buffalo is a large creature, with comparatively short horns turned down- wards, and is as perfectly quiet and inoffensive as the English ox, and, like that, is used for draught. Poultry and fish are the chief sources of animal diet, with pigeons and various small birds. The poultry is diminutive, and is reared on the flat roofs of the houses: fowls are never seen in the streets, as the swarms of vagrant dogs would give them no quarter. At night the whole town resounds with the crowing of cocks, the incessant barking and snarhng of the dogs, and the 0^ 18 LETTERS OF braying of innumerable donkeys. The butter here is intolerable, and as well as the milk, is for the most part the produce of the goats which one meets everywhere driven about the streets; I have given up all idea of tasting butter till I get back to dear old England. The water at Alexandria is delivered to the con- sumers in the city in skins slung across the backs of camels. The appearance of these water-skins is very far from recommending the pure element to thirsty lips: but I have already learned the necessity of not being over nice in anything relating to eating and drinking in Egypt, as far at least as regards the raw material. The water at Alexandria is wholly derived from the mun- dation of the Nile, which is suffered to flow into the large subterranean cisterns of the ancient city, many of which are stiU in perfect preservation; and in these cisterns the water is retained fit for use, till again replenished by the succeeding year's inundation. The mouths of these cisterns, looking like wells, may be seen in various parts of the city, and are usually surrounded by a crowd of water-carriers with their camels; the water Is either drawn up in leather buckets, or by a rude water-wheel called a Sa'ckiegeh, having earthen jars fastened around the circumference of the wheel, which is worked by a horse. The soil at Alexandria is impregnated with salt, which is, I presume, the cause of its dreary and absolute sterility, wherever the hand of man has not improved its nature. The great Frank Square is supposed to have been the site of the ancient docks, the soil in which has been raised by contmual accumulations from buildings, and perhaps natural de- posits, because sea-weed is found at a certain depth below the surface, and during heavy rains water rises through the soil and covers the Square with pools, that fF. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 2. leave on subsiding, by absorption underground, and by evaporation, a saline incrustation, as I remarked after the heavy shov?ers a day or two ago. The Nile water of the old underground cisterns is very clear, nor do I perceive any unpleasant taste in it, or find it disagree : but I do not often drink it alone, but mixed with Claret or Burgundy, a wine I prefer to Sherry, which is not good here, and very dear besides. The general price for both French and Spanish wines of all kinds is thirty piastres, about five shillings, the bottle. Marsala alone is much cheaper, only fifteen piastres; pale ale and porter, ten piastres or one shilling and eight-pence the bottle, which is exorbitant, being two-thirds more than the retail price in England. The fruit here is very indifferent, with the exception of a small species of fig, bananas, and dates ; the latter are most abundant, there being whole groves of date-palms in diflferent quarters of the city, and hardly a garden, however small, with- out several of these trees, which are now loaded with their great pendulous clusters of ripe fruit, making a splendid, although somewhat monotonous appearance: the growth of the date-palm being so extremely formal, that every tree looks like the reflection of its next neigh- bour in a mirror. The date has nothing of the fight feathery aspect, and wants the majestic stature of the cocoa-nut, arica, and other tropical palms; here, it seldom exceeds thirty or thirty-five feet, and usually not more than twenty-five ; and its rather stiff leaves have a sea-green tint, not the soft bright verdure of more southern palms. I see three varieties of date in the markets, one a large yellow or orange coloured sort, another of a bright red, and a third of a dark purple or plum colour : but the date not being a fruit much to my taste, fresh or dried, I patronize them very little. The 20 LETTERS OF only grapes I have seen here, are a large, oval, fleshy, and insipid fruit, of a muddy opaque white, tinged here and there with red, and looking much like the white grape imported in jars from Lisbon, and so often seen in our shops ; but the season of grapes is nearly gone by, so I ought not perhaps to conclude that I have eaten the choicest fruit of the vine, although I am told that very few are good at Alexandria. To an utter stranger to the East, hke myself, Alexandria is an entertaining place, although said to present less of an oriental character than many others. Viewed from a distance, or from the lofty crow's nest on the roof of my hotel, the place has a very imposing appearance. The fine harbour now covered with shipping, the blue expanse of the Mediterranean on the north, and the vast masses of houses in the rear, the numerous country villas of the Franks and wealthier natives in the distance, the large gardens and planta- tions of date trees which occupy a great space within the walls, and the noble area of the Frank Square on which I am looking down, all lighted up by a bright sun or moon, (for the latter is now at the full), furnish certainly a fine panorama; but not one of these objects will bear the test of a close inspection ; a profusion of mortar and whitewash are the elements of all this appearance of splendour. The glare is excessive on every side, there is no shade, no relief from the hot dazzling white of every thing around ; the very ground is lime dust, partly derived from the mounds of rubbish that block up every piece of waste or vacant ground, partly from the naturally white calcareous rock of the vicinity. Outside the walls, the most absolute sterility reigns; vast mounds of broken pottery and building rubbish, with scarcely a trace of vegetation : only here W. A. BR OMFIELD.— No. 2. and there a thin wiry grass, (Cynodon Dactylon), a few patches of the castor-oil plant, acacias or prickly pear, or a little patch of garden maintained hy constant irrigation, meet the eye : but some of the roads leading out of the city eastward, were planted by ths late Pasha with acacias, Accacia leblek, which are now thriving, and within the walls are similar avenues of acacias and tamarisks, but too young to afford much shade at present. The Frank Square is a parallelogram of noble dimensions, and viewed by moonlight looks quite magnificent, but wretched taste and dilapidation are its distinguishing features by daylight : whitewash, falling stucco, plaster, and decaying wood-work, being the materials which light up with such effect at night, or in perspective by day. Between this square and the harbour, is spread a vast labyrinth of intricate streets, lanes, and alleys of wretched houses, densely inhabited by a mixed population of all nations, and of every imaginable costume. Some of the streets are very long and tolerably wide, but most of them are extremely narrow, close, and crooked, but highly entertaining to thread one's way through, amongst the motley groups of human beings, camels, donkeys, and dogs, with which they are absolutely thronged. The dogs here are a serious nuisance from their numbers, and disposition to growl and bark at Frank passengers, between whom and the faithful, they distinguish with great acuteness, never molesting the latter. The race is lean, wolfish, and prick-eared, with long whitish or reddish hair, extremely lazy, lying about the roads in the sun, and giving themselves no trouble except to fly out and bark at the unoffending infidel, especially if he happens to be on foot. However, they are great cowards, sel- dom attempting to bite excepting unawares, or at an 21 22 LETTERS OF advantage; the merely pretending to stoop and pick up a stone, putting them to flight insfanter. The dogs inhabiting the towns are less troublesome to strangers than those which haunt the miserable hovels of mud or unbaked brick outside the walls, near which, it is some- times hardly safe to pass for the multitude of these animals. In the way of antiquities, there is scarcely anything worthy of notice at Alexandria, although Greek in- scriptions are sometimes met with in removing the mounds of rubbish that have been accumulating for ages in and around the city. Of course, I paid a visit to Pompey's pUlar, and the two obelisks known as Cleopatra's needles, and I cannot say that I was at all struck with either. The former stands on a desolate hill surrounded by mounds of rubbish, and is as badly executed, and as ill-designed a column as can be ; the base is in a very dilapidated state, and the shaft bedaubed in huge black letters with the patronymics of two ambitious aspirants for fame. The obelisks are close to the shore of the harbour, the only one stUl standing looks as if it could not do so any very great time longer, being supported solely on crumbling blocks of stone, the hieroglyphics with which it is covered are in a great measure obliterated on the two sides most exposed to the sea breeze : those on the remaining faces are in better preservation. A paltry shed, and a guard- house for soldiers, stand close by the erect obelisk, the other lies a short distance oif half buried in the soil. Some fine columns of red granite of Upper Egypt, may be seen lying here and there in the city, that have been dug out in making foundations. There are no fine mosques in Alexandria, but a few of the minarets are interesting in their own peculiar barbaric style of W. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 2. 23 architecture. None of the convents, or other buildings pubhc or private, have the least pretension to beauty, most of them being white-washed structures of the poorest design, and, in general, extremely out of repair. The harem and palace of the Pasha are imposing in their way, with a rather pretty garden, open to the public, but the palace is quite dismantled, as his Highness very seldom honours Alexandria with a visit, which I do not wonder at, as the place can have little attraction for any one ; nor has the reigning Pasha the same motives as his renowned predecessor for making Alexandria one of his residences, since naval affairs engage but little of his attention, and he has sunk to be the mere vassal and representative of his master the Sultan, who it is rumoured, is far from being satisfied with his administration of affairs in Egypt, and would probably have deposed Albas Pasha, were not his hereditary right to rule the country guaranteed to him by the great European powers. The only really handsome building in Alexandria, will be the English church in the Frank Square, which is now advancing although with extreme slowness towards completion. The truth is, the building is on such a scale of magnificence as is vastly disproportioned to the wants of the Protestant population of Alexandria, of which very small community many are not members of the established church, but dissenters, or presby- terians, &c., but who favour the undertaking because they think it preferable to have any Protestant place of worship rather than none at all. The original Govern- ment grant was lavished on a design by an English architect, Mr. Wylde, and the walls of the structure built of a most unnecessary thickness, which, together with the quantity of tracery and other ornament, soon 24 LETTERS OF exhausted the funds, and the church, although not yet roofed in, and without the tower, has aheady cost upwards of four thousand pounds. Subscriptions con- tinue however to come in, although slowly, from persons visiting or passing through Egypt on their way to India, and workmen are always doing something towards finishing the church. Mr. Winder has been about fifteen years in Alexandria, is a very well informed man, and seems to be an Oriental as well as Hebrew scholar. He tells me that the society of Alexandria is very limited, and that he leads a very secluded life, amusing himself, I should suppose, chiefly with his books : for as to any other means of passing time agreeably, neither the social, nor certainly tbe natural attractions in or about the city, oiFer the least scope to a permanent resident ; for even to a stranger like myself, the objects of interest here are extremely few. Filth, disease, and the most abject poverty, meet you at every step ; when you walk out you are everywhere annoyed by the dogs; the glare from the white ground and still whiter build- ings and rubbish heaps is excessive, the heat, as you may suppose, not diminished by reflection, and clouds of lime dust ; and there is no shade except in the gardens : there has however been a cool breeze during my stay, and the nights have been delightfully fresh and pleasant. The mosquitoes torment you in your apartment without a moment's respite as soon as the sun goes down, and in a less degree during the day. Another enemy, so minute as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, and which is here called a sand-fly, is very troublesome by the tickling sensation it causes in running over the back of the hands, and by the occasional bite it inflicts, which is like the contact of a minute particle of some ignited matter. The abund- J^F. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 2. 25 ance of mosquitoes at Alexandria is probably due to the underground cisterns, of which so many remain in as good repair as in ancient times, and to the vast surface of stagnant, and half fresh, half sea-water of the Lake Mareotis, which is the cause likewise of the fever and dysentery, that in addition to the cliolei'a, (which is again on the increase), are sadly prevalent at this moment in the city. The season, this year, as I learn from Mr. Davidson, the Company's chief agent at Alexandria, has been i>emarkably sickly, the heat un- usually prolonged, and the rise of the Nile somewhat less than it ought to be. After heavy showers the streets are in a puddle, like thick cream, and their extreme narrowness hinders the evaporation of the water with which they are sprinkled daily by the water- carriers, and which always keeps them damp as well as dirty. Hence a low typhus fever is one of the great sources of the mortality in Alexandria, which is so ex- cessive as to amount to one-tenth of the entire popu- lation annually, as appears by the returns of the last twenty years. In London the average annual mortality is only one in forty or forty-five of the whole population. Between the 20th and 26th the cases of cholera had increased from two, three, five to eleven per diem. Believe me. My dear E- Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. 26 LETTERS OF (Letter III.) Sheppard's British Hotel, UzBEKiEH, Cairo, October 29th, 1850. My dear E- In my last letter dispatched from this interesting city, I had not space left for any account of my voyage of thirty hours from Alexandria, which I shall now proceed with, before giving you my impressions of Cairo, of which I have already seen some of the chief lions, including the Pasha himself. The heat, thoi^h much below what it is a month earlier, still continues very high for the season, keeping steadily at 80° or 82° during the day; this morning at eight o'clock it was only 78°, and the sun when not veiled as it was yester- day by thin stratified clouds, is scorchingly hot, and the nights are still so warm that a single sheet is an ample covering under the mosquito net, which of course is a necessary evil, as it obstructs the ingress of cool, and the egress of heated air. Captain Lindguist, who has been residing six years at Suez as an agent of the Oriental company, or Transit administration, tells me W. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 3. that when here in ordinary seasons, he is accustomed to have a fire in his office from the 1 st of November, and that this year the cold was so long protracted, that he did not leave off fires till the 25th of April, which really seems incredible in this latitude, 30°, and at the sea level. Mr. Trail, late gardener to Ibrahim Pasha at Rhoda, for whom I had a letter and pamphlet from Sir W. J. Hooker, and whom I traced out to his abode at Old Cairo yesterday, informs me, that hoar frost is no uncommon thing here in the winter mornings, and that he has seen ice, (thin of course), formed on pools in the desert ; probably more through the brisk evaporation by the wind in this dry climate, than through the actually low temperature of the atmosiDhere. At present I do not conceive that the most chilly person in the world would think of a fire in his room without a double distillation of lily dew at every pore, from the bare idea; but the temperature will perhaps fall rapidly when it begins to sink, and I am thankful when I look on the warm clothing, flannel waistcoats, &c., which I had the precaution to add to my travelling list on leaving England. I left Alexandria at 5 p.m. on the 24th, in one of the boats for the conveyance to Cairo of ordinary pas- sengers, (not going to India), and which is tracked by a small steamer that likewise has passengers on board, on the Mahmoudeh canal, as far as Atfeh, where the canal joins the Nile, and where a steamer of a larger size waits to receive the passengers and their luggage, and take them on to Cairo. These boats belong to the Transit administration, which is entirely in the hands of the Pasha. The time of departure was unfortunate, inasmuch as the most interesting part of the trip on the canal to Atfeh was performed in the dark, and indeed 27 28 LETTERS OF foi- most part of the night in a thick fog which shroudeJ from view all that a bright, but rather late rising moon would have revealed of the banks on either side of the canal. Hence, I got no sight of the former situation of Sais, once the capital of the Delta, and the new build- ings at Atfeh, the locks, &c., were but dimly caught sight of across the mist which wetted everything on deck, and caused some unpleasant reflections on inter- mittent or remittent fever to cross my mind occasionally, as a few hours before embarking the heat was very great, and the air now felt chilly as well as damp, and I wished for a great coat in addition to the light clothing I had on, not desiring to be in the cabin below, which was crowded and insufferably close. We arrived at Atfeh before daybreak, and the fog on the river did not clear away tiU some hours after sunrise. Shortly after leaving Alexandria, we heard a great splashing in the canal, and much stir and vociferation on board the steamer, which caused us novices some alarm, as we imao-ined that a man had fallen overboard; it turned out to be only the landing a passenger, which was accomplished by his divesting himself of every article of clothing, then jumping overboard and swimming ashore, his wardrobe, previously made into a bundle, being flung after him. Our starting point on the IMahmoudeh Canal was about two miles from the hotel; the canal itself is of great width, and a wonderful undertaking, when one considers that it was finished through its entire length of about fifty miles, within a twelvemonth : but the reflection that the convenience to travellers derived from it was owing to a terrible exercise of arbitrary power, and attended with a fearful sacrifice of human life, became the predominant feeling at the sight of it. TV. A. BROMFIELD.-^o. 3. 29 Night soon closed in and hid the country from view, but that part of it which we saw on quitting Alexandria was pretty in its way, the banks of the canal being diversified with white villasj gardens, and small culti- vated fields of maize, melons, and diiferent kinds of vegetables, with fine sycamore and acacia trees planted along the roads. The night passed slowly and dis- agreeably owing to the thick wet fog on deck, and the stifling closeness of the cabin below, where, however, I could have slept away the hours well enough, had there been room to lie down, but every place, even to the tables was occupied by recumbent passengers, Turks, Italians, Greeks, and non-descripts of all nations, by some of whom it would not have been prudent or agreeable to have bivouacked, and the cabin smelt strongly of tobacco, and odours less refined even than that. We had one distinguished person on board, of no less rank than a Pasha, I think he was called Kheredden Pasha, or something very Hke it, a stout middle-aged, jovial personage, with a round good humoured counte- nance, and jet black beard, who fared like any of the other passengers, and spent his time in smoking and playing cards. He wore the insignia of a Pasha, a crescent and star of diamonds on the vest in front, and the dress of a Turkish field officer and admiral, as he belongs to both services, and was present at the battle of Navarino. I understand that he contracts to furnish the Transit administration with butchers' meat, which is not thought derogatory to the high dignity he has attained. A day or two after this arrangement was made, he invited aU the officers of the administration to a dinner in Cairo, at which, I am told that the cham- pagne, which is his Highness' pet beverage, flowed without scant. The diamond decoration of the star and 30 LETTERS OF crescent is conferred with the rank, but is only lent so long as the Pasha continues in favour ; at his death, or deposition, it reverts to the Sultan, but may be pur- chased like any other jewel by the family. No ceremony was observed towards him while on board ; he ate, drank, talked, and smoked, like aU the rest, and his Highness favoured us with his company in an omnibus expedition on the Desert, which he appeared to enjoy as much as any of us. I fancy however that Klieredden Pasha holds a sort of brevet rank, as I understand he has no province to rule over : he is said to be a man of great energy and some talent : he certainly is marvellously inclined to good fellowship, and he, I think, were he in power, could never prove a harsh or tyrannical governor, to judge from his countenance only. During the whole of the 24th we had a good view of the Delta through which we passed. The features are very tame and monotonously uniform. The yellow turbid Nile flowing between crumbling banks of brown alluvial soil, which offers nothing but a perfect dead level over which large tovms and villages are thicldy dispersed, each an assemblage of the most miserable hovels of mud or unburnt brick, with here and there a tenement or two of rather better description, perhaps the residence of the sheyk, or chief man of the village. Many of these places are of considerable size, and all have one or more mosques, the minarets of which are the only buildings that have the smallest pretension to anything like architectural design or skill. Of these towns or large villages, no one but the Arab knows the names, so that could I have remembered them, there was no possibility of learning their different designations : some of them were doubtless on the sites of ancient places of celebrity. Groves of date-palms which here shoot up W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 3. to fifty, sixty, and seventy feet, usually surround these places, with here and there a spreading sycamore or acacia. A most oppressive tax of three piastres annually is levied on every date tree, which, when their great number is considered, and the extreme poverty of the inhabitants, must be a cruel impost, but I have great doubts of the correctness of the statement, as a tax of rather more than sixpence on every tree, where these amount to many hundreds, perhaps even thou- sands, is more than I can well conceive so destitute a population able to pay, being mainly, if not entirely made up of fellahs or cultivators of the soil, a wretched, half clad race, of coarse, ugly features, and squalid to the last degree. Camels, dromedaries, donkeys, and huge buffaloes, with a few dark brown sheep, are their chief possessions ; the buffaloes may be seen continually lying in mid river, with their noses alone out of the water, or swimming across to the opposite bank, quiet inoffensive animals, used both for draught and burden. We remarked many persons ploughing with a camel and a buffalo yoked together in most ill assorted fellowship. Dovecotes swarming with myriads of pigeons, rose high above the houses in some of the larger towns, of a conical shape, like immense haystacks, and pierced with innumerable holes for the birds to enter in and come out. Pigeons are a great article of consumption in Egypt, where poultry takes the place of butcher's meat in a great measure. These Egyptian towns have the same light brown colour as the soil; their is nothing to break the uniformity of their aspect, no contrast of colouring; the only arborescent vege- tation is the date palm dispersed in groups, or forming groves, but giving no shade, which can only be had under an occasional acacia, sycamore, or nabr, a gigantic 32 LETTERS OF but common species of buckthorne, the small fruit of which is eaten by the Arabs : while the unvarying glare, and sameness of splendour in the sky, must soon fatigue and satiate the eye that has no diversity of scenery or of objects to turn to for relief on the earth beneath. ^The flats of Holland have more to interest than the Delta of the Nile; for there one sees a population flourishing in plenty and comfort; here, nothing but a people in the lowest condition as regards civilization, poor, and oppressed beyond that of any other country. I was considerably disappointed in the verdure of the Delta, of which one hears so much : the cultivation, such as it is, appears to occupy patches ; a great part of the river banks is still untiUed, and either bare of vegetation or producing coarse herbage, the nature of which I could not determine, but it is most monotonous in its character, and we were seldom near enough to the shore to ascertain the kind of crop with certainty. Maize seemed to be one of the most im- portant productions, and I remarked sugar and tobacco occasionally, as also cotton, but many of the crops were only now springing up, the JSIile having so lately begun to subside. From the low level of the steamer's deck no extensive view of the Delta can be obtained. Not even from the flat roof of this hotel, which is of very considerable height, nor from the still loftier elevation of the citadel, which offers one of the most magnificent panoramas in the world, can I descry anything of that lake-like appearance the country is said to present at the season of " high Nile." I had fine views of the Delta from the skirts of the desert on the way to Suez two days ago, but at an elevation much too low, and with a sky too hazy to distinguish objects clearly. The eflTect was that of a Dutch landscape by one of the old W. A. BROMFI£LD.— No. 3. masters, with much of that indistinctness which age gives to an oil painting, of a couple of centuries ago. We passed the Barrage, where the Nile is prevented by strong embankments from subsiding in the Delta till the irrigation of the land is complete ; and our approach to Boulak, the port of Cairo, did not take place tiU 10, p.m. of the 25th. We landed amidst a confused hubbub of camels, donkeys, and vociferous and quarrel- some Arabs, and found Mr. Sheppard, the proprietor of the English Hotel at which I am staying, ready, with two or three omnibuses, to whirl us away along an excellent road bordered with thriving acacias to his establishment in tliis magnificent Square, the Usbekieh, about a mile and a half distant from Boulak, November 1st. This place is immeasurably above Alexandria in point of interest, as regards variety, comfort, and beauty. From the flat roof of this hotel I have a splendid view of the city, with its thousand mosques and minarets; and above all, conspicuous in the distance to the S.S.W., yet seemingly close at hand, the mighty pyramids of Ghizeh, appearing like moun- tains against the pale blue sky ; but with my invaluable companion at my side, the telescope, I can distinctly bring all the ranges of stone composing them into view. Below me is a waving sea of foliage, from rows of fine acacias, (Acacia Lebbek), sycomores of scripture, (Ficus Sycomorus), and other trees, with which the fine esplanade is thickly planted, but there is not an atom of turf, scarcely a blade of grass, or weed of any kind beneath the trees ; all is bare ground, as in the desert — a poor, thin, wiry grass is only seen here and there in spots artificially irrigated. My delight is to mount the roof about sun-set, and watch the departing rays, bringing out the pyramids m 33 34 LETTERS OF stronger and stronger relief as darkness approaches, till at length they can just be discerned as two dark masses like little mountains on the skirts of the desert. I have witnessed one or two splendid sun-sets since my arrival in Egypt, but more frequently they have been dull and vapoury, the sky pale and milliy by day, with dim star- light by night. To day, November 2nd, the heavens are quite over- spread with a thin veil of white vapour, with a faint blue sky, streaked and speckled with fleecy clouds, (mackerel sky), here and there. We have had little else hut south and south-east winds lately, most unfavourable for tra- vellers going up the Nile. Accounts have just been received from the Eed Sea of the cholera having com- mitted most dreadful ravages at Jeddah, the port of Mecca, among the pilgrims now assembled there. Cairo is at present quite free from the visitation. All residents with whom I have conversed on the subject, are unan- imous in asserting that the season of greatest heat in Cairo, (that is, from July to September inclusive), is the freest of all the four from sickness of every kind, al- though inducing much personal discomfort ; and that the winter is in fact the time looked upon by the inhabit- ants as the least healthy, on account of the comparative dampness of the air, and the vicissitudes of temperature. Although the cool season has commenced, the heat is still very considerable. I have not seen it under 80° night or morning, and at mid-day in my room I have noted it as high as 83°. As the sun now sets before half-past five, the union of such short days with such long hot nights makes one feel as if one was between the tropics, as the temperature just now is as high and as agreeable as in the West Indies. It was at 90°, I understand, at Alexandria a few days ago. This house is quite W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o, 3. 35 modern, indeed almost new, with very thick stone walls, but from the bad clumsy fitting, and want of finish about the woodwork and painting, which last is never renewed after the first application, you would suppose the building to be a century old. The room I occupy is a large, airy apartment, with whitewashed walls, coarsely coloured in fresco below in a sort of imitation of panel wainscoting of a slate colour, bordered with dark red brown, above which is a sort of fleur-de-lys pattern impressed on the walls in flaming scarlet. The room, which has a south aspect, is nearly a square of about twenty-four feet, and has an alcoved roof, very little, if at all, less in height from the well laid stone floor, and finished in a cornice and oval of unpainted wood, pierced in an open pattern, displaying neither taste nor skill in design. Three very large glazed sash windows nearly fill up the front side, which looks on the Uzbekieh, and immediately below them runs a raised stone dado, covered with luxurious cushions or divans, of blue printed calico, which with window cur- tains to match, a light iron bedstead with mosquito curtains of thin muslin, &c. &c. complete the furniture of my domicile, which is very comfortable at this season, but I suspect, must prove cold in the winter. Mr. Sheppard is fitting up new premises on a more extensive scale than these, with every convenience for English travellers. The charges are forty piastres per diem, six shillings and eightpence, if by the week ; or fifty piastres, eight shillings and fourpence, for a less time. This includes lodging and board, which last consists of a most sub- stantial breakfast at half-past eight, luncheon, with fruit, at one, dinner, (excellent), at half-past six, with a cup of coffee afterwards ; but no tea, unless required, and paid for as an extra. 36 LETTERS OF I find Cairo an extremely amusing place, and from its great size, its novelties are not soon exhausted. The population is variously stated, from eighty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand, and together with old Cairo and Boulak, which may be called suburbs, the extent of ground it covers is very great. For five piastres, or one shilling, I can get a donkey, (of which animal the choice is inexhaustible), for the whole day, on which, or sometimes on foot, I thread the inextricable labyrinth of crooked streets, lanes and alleys, of which the city is made up, trusting to chance to bring me into some familiar street, or open place from vrhence I can direct my steps homewards again. No one who has not visited Cairo can form an adequate idea of these strange thoroughfares from the published views made from drawings by the cleverest artists ; because none that I have seen, convey any just notion of the extreme dinginess and dilapidation that everywhere meet the eye. The worst parts of London cannot be compared with the residences of even the respectable class of Cairenes. The houses are solidly built of stone, at least as high as the basement story, which is commonly pierced with low doorways, gates, and iron barred windows, sometimes having quaint carvings or Arabic inscriptions above them, but mostly very dungeon-like in appearance, and opening into receptacles for dust and rubbish, or into square courts, which give light and air to the residents on the next and succeeding stories, — for the basement is seldom or never, I believe, inhabited, unless it may be by the poorer classes. The part of the house above the basement usually projects forward on timber beams, and presents a confused mass of plaster, with windows glazed, or more commonly with a cage- like projection, carved or rather pierced in elaborate fr. A. BR03IFIELD.~No. 3. patterns of brown unpainted wood. Some, however, of the principal thoroughfares are more regular, in better repair, and wider, and the city exhibits a variety of architecture that appears absolutely inexhaustible. You come at almost every step to some mosque, arched gate, or passage covered with tracery, or painted in various colours, and with Arabic inscriptions in fresco, or sculptured on the stone, for the most part in miserable taste and execution, but at other times in a style of elegance and finish, that surprises you by the taste and artistic skill displayed, and by the strange contrasts of the decorations on perhaps the same building. Some of the lanes or alleys are so narrow that there is barely room for a single donkey to squeeze himself through, but these are not either common or much frequented : very few of the streets are wider than the narrowest alley in London, and are always thronged with pe- destrians, donkeys and their riders, with horses, camels, and occasionally with carriages and carts. I had been led to suppose that much caution and circumspection were required in riding through the streets and lanes of Cairo, to avoid accidents from collision with camels and wheeled carriages, but I find it the easiest and safest thing in the world to pass through the naiTowest and most densely crowded thoroughfares, both on foot and on a donkey. In the latter case the animal seems to know how to save you the trouble of guiding him, and threads his way through the crowd with an adroitness that is surprising, even at a full trot or amble, their only serious defect being that they are apt to come down with you sometimes, (an accident which has not yet happened to me), and when it does occur, is in general only a subject for laughter. The pace of the camel is so extremely slow, that though noiseless, there is very 38 LETTERS OF little difficulty in avoiding a string of these animals on meeting them, but there is a possibility of their coming against you unawares from behind, since unless fur- nished with bells, which is not always the case, their tread is quite inaudible, and you might be swept off your donkey by the enormous loads which project from their sides : but I have not witnessed or heard of such an occurrence. The approach of a carriage is always announced in time to avoid it, by a courier on foot, who cracks a ponderous whip to clear the way. Every one of rank amongst the natives, on driving or riding out on horseback, is preceded by a running footman, at- tired with sash or girdle, bringing to mind the act of Elijah girding up his loins and running before the chariot of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. The donkeys have been called the cabs of Cairo, and truly the comparison holds both as to their number and convenience. These animals literally swarm, as they are used equally by high and low, and you can never be at a loss for one in whatever part of the tovra you may chance to find yourself, but you will have to contend against a host of donliey boys, each endeavouring with loud vociferations to force his own donkey upon yoiu- notice as super-eminent for all valuable asinine qualities above its fellows. Fortunately these creatures are not much given to kicking, otherwise, it might fare ill with the pedestrian whilst making his selection from a dozen or more, all hustling and jostling, head and heels turned towards himself, (the centre of the group), indiiferently. Their pace, whether amble, trot, or gallop, is extremely easy, and the saddles are famously padded ; the pommel is very high and stuffed like a cushion, which in the event of a tumble must be a great advantage. The donkey boy accompanies you, to urge on the animal ff: A. BROMFIELD.— No. 3. with his stick, and constant cry of " oai, oai," •with- out which appliances, an Egyptian donkey could no more be incited to active locomotion than his English brethren by those of similar import, from whom I was surprised to find them, after what I had heard of their qualities, capabilities and appearance, differ eo Httle. English donkeys that have been well treated and looked after, I do not think are inferior to those of Egypt in any points of importance. The race here is generally of rather slighter make, the legs longer, and flanks thinner than at home, indicating as we should say, more of blood ; they are perhaps also more active, but are not superior in size, and require as much urging to make them go, when not accompanied by their drivers, as ours usually do. Still they are admirable little animals for the service they have to perform, that of winding their way through over crowded streets, where horses could not find a passage in equal numbers, or with equal safety. I saw a donkey the other day with dark stripes across the legs, as if a cross with the Zebra ; but as that creature does not inhabit Egypt or Northern Africa, the darker markings may have had some other origin. With kindest regards to all our friends, Believe me, Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. 40 LETTERS OF (Letter IV.) Sheppaed's Hotel, UzBEKiEH, Cairo, November Itli, 1850. ]\Iy dear E- XlAViNG returned from an expedition to the Pyramids yesterday, I hasten to give you a narrative of our proceedings to and from .those wonderful structures, and the impression they made on my mind, whilst quite fresh from the visit. Amongst the passengers by the Austrian Lloyds vessel from Trieste, which arrived at Alexandria on the 3rd, was a gentleman with whom I got into conversation at the table d'hote here, and who proved to be an intimate friend and neighbour of Mr. L. V. H , and whom I recoUect having met at W. D. a few years back. He and his son were intend- ing to see the Pyramids if possible before leaving Cairo, and proposed my joining them, an arrangement to which I readily assented, and we agreed to set off the same afternoon, and taking a tent and provisions with us, to bivouack at the Pyramids that night, and rise fresh for their examination at daybreak. Our train consisted of four donkeys for our party of three, and IF. A. BROMFIELD.^'^o. 4. 41 the dragoman, besides a spare donkey, and their attend- ant drivers, and a horse for carrying the tent, some spare clothing, thick horse cloths instead of mats, a large chest or box for provisions, knives, forks, glasses, &c.; the provisions consisting of cold chicken, a cold goose, ditto roast shovJder of mutton, bread, cheese, coffee, sugar and eggs, a few bottles of pale ale, one of water, and another of brandy. We mounted our donkeys about half-past four, a great deal too late in the day for a journey of eighteen miles, which is the distance of the Pyramids from Cairo during the time of high Nile, or the season of inundation ; but we had been riding about the city, to the citadel, and elsewhere, all the morning, and Mr. W had engagements that detained him till late in the afternoon, leaving us only an hour before sunset, which in this latitude, and in the beginning of November, happens at half-past five o'clock, and the twilight afterwards is not of very long duration. Our route lay through Old Cairo, (which stands on the site of the fortress of Babylon), we then crossed the NUe in a ferry boat to the large and populous village of Geezeh or Ghizeh, (Arabic names are spelt in various ways, and the g is either hard or soft according to the dialect), from whence these Pyramids take their names. The views on the Nile at Old Cairo and Geezeh are very pretty; white houses, on either side of the broad river, being interspersed every- where with trees, gardens, date groves, and the island of Ehoda, clad in rich cultivation, occupying the centre of the Nile. The way from Old to New Cairo is a fine broad road, planted with trees, and through one continuous garden of olive, fig, mulberry, castor, or prickly pear, &c., beneath wliich grow all the kinds of esculent vegetables for which Egypt was formerly 42 LETTERS OF renowned, as leeks, onions, garlic, lentils, lettuce, beans, melons, and many others. After leaving Geezeh the daylight began to fail us, but the twilight lasted us still for a few miles farther, and when the new moon set, the evening star shone with such brilliancy as to supply her place nearly as well. The roads at this season of the inundation run over the broad embankment between the now inundated fields, which give the country the aspect of a vast inland sea or lake, studded with islands, and intersected with isthmuses and long promontories. The night was beautifiilly clear, and deliciously cool, and the Pyramids were always in view, seen in deep relief against the sky, but for a long time we never seemed to approach any nearer to them. At length we unex- pectedly came to a spot where the weight of the water had forced a passage through the embankment ia two places, and made it impossible for our donkeys to proceed further, and we began to fear that we should have to pass the night on this narrow causeway, between two inundated tracts of land ; but our drago- man comforted us with the assurance, that by shouting, and shewing our lantern, (which we did by perching the dragoman on the horse's back, and making him a living Pharos), a sailing boat would put off to the breach from the shore beneath the Pyramids, or from a village near at hand, which we could dimly descry. We had, however, to wait about an hour before the boat arrived, during which time the dew fell, and the air began to be chilly ; but to this, our half-naked Arabs did not appear to be in the least degree sensible. We amused ourselves with getting the provision chest unloaded from the horse, and making a good supper upon the contents, the chest itself serving for table and chairs. When the boat came, we put our tent, clothes, JV. A. BROMFFELD. -No. 4. 43 and the above mentioned chest into it, and proceeded with our dragoman, who was also our cook, (Mohammed by name), over inundated fields, destined to become in a few month's time, dry and verdant with the fruits of the East — but now the habitation of innumerable frogs, and myriads of water fowl, — to the landing place beneath the Pyramids, which we reached about ten o'clock, p.m. The horse, donkeys, and donkey boys, remained under the open canopy of heaven at the broken down embank- ment till our return, about two, p.m., the next day, with no other covering than the scanty clothing they had on, which is very frequently not even as much as strict decency requires. The ascent from the usual landing place towards the Pyramids is long and steep. We arrived at a row of tombs, hewn out of the rock, still much below the Pyramids, close in front of which we soon found ourselves, and pitched our tents on the soil composed of debris of sepulchres, pottery, &c., mixed with sand and stones, and were immediately visited by the Shekh of the village, and his posse of chattering Arabs, whose vociferations never ceased for a moment, till the picturesque guard was set for the night, when they subsided into low gossiping tones that continued audible till I fell asleep on my horse cloth, which with a thick pilot cloth great coat and flannel under garments, in addition to the ordinary upper ones of coat, &c., I found insufficient wholly to ward off the cold of the desert air, even under the shelter of a tent, for the wind blew in upon us from under it all night, though not with any great violence. A French traveller and his party were encamped in another tent near us, having the tri- coloured flag displayed. 44 LETTERS OF The next morning we were up a little before sun-rise, (about half-past six), and saw that luminary emerge, and light up a beautiful and singular landscape, the rich inundated valley of the Nile, with the villages rising like islands out of the watery expanse, which teems with incredible numbers of geese and other water birds at this season. From our elevated position, looking northwards, we distinctly saw Cairo with its lofty citadel, and the magnificent mosque of Mohammed Ali crowning all ; the Pyramids were behind us, high above our heads, and even their tops concealed by the steep intervening hills of coarse sand and gravel, stones of all sizes, angular blocks of basalt, reddish granite, and soft white limestone rock on which the Pyramids stand, and of which they are mainly composed, pebbles of agate, rounded by attrition, fragments of pottery, (coarse red earthenware), ibis vases, human and other bones, and a strange assemblage of debris, belonging to different epochs and formations, amongst which is one having a volcanic appearance like lava or tufa, and very de- composable, whilst portions of the white hmestone which is soft enough to be cut with the knife, are a complete mass of shells. I also picked up near the Pyramids of Cephrenes fragments of a hard rock of a violet or even puce colour, of which I saw no block of any size. As soon as the sun had risen we toiled up to the base of the greater pyramid. To say that it came up to, or feU short of, or exceeded my expectations of its magnitude, would not express the impression I received from its contemplation, and that of the whole group, so unlike did I find the reality to all the representations I have seen of these enormous structures. Their exterior is far more rude and rugged, from time and wilful spoliation than I had any conception of; and I can fV. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 4. 45 compare them, on a close approach, to nothing so much as to the products of some vast stone quarry, shaped into roughly squared blocks, broken and chipped in the process, and piled into a huge pyramid for convenience of transport or use upon the spot. So great is their magnitude, that at a very moderate distance, say half a mile or less, the dilapidation of the courses of stone becomes almost invisible, and the pyramidal outline stands forth in all the symmetrical regularity which these structures possessed when their casing was entire, and as they appear in drawings and prints of them taken from a distance. They are chiefly built of a greyish or yellowish white limestone, easily cut with a knife, and approaching in texture to indurated chalk of the Freshwater cliffs, not indeed quite so soft, but almost as white, and of different degrees of hardness, often full of shells. I brought away pieces of the great pyramid of Cheops, and specimens of the mortar or cement used to unite them, which is harder than the stone itself. Mr. W , who seems quite an antiquary, could see nothing in the Pyramids but what was matter for wonder and astonishment, and like the rest of his brethren, professed to find deep skill and science in the architectural details. To myself, they seem very inartificial structures, requiring only a knowledge of the common principles of levellmg, and the appHcation of the most ordinary mechanical means, to rear them. With the exception of the vast granite blocks that form the entrance and the walls of the interior chambers, the extreme softness of the limestone offered great facility to the workmen employed on that material for the courses; and as to the raising and placing these blocks in situ, I had, long before I saw them, doubted the supposed difficulty of that 46 LETTERS OF process on which people are so fond of expatiating. In this doubt I am more than ever confirmed, by observing on the spot the great inferiority of these blocks in regard to size, to the exaggerated accounts usually given by travellers of their enormous di- mensions, which are in truth, no greater than those of similar blocks in ordinary use for our own sohd public works, ""and vastly smaller than the gigantic masses employed in the Breakwater at Plymouth. It would not be fair to charge the manifest inequality of size as a defect in stones intended to be hidden from view by a solid exterior casing, such as there seems, no doubt, once encrusted the Pyramids, and of which a part still remains in good preservation about the summit of the second pyramid, or that of Cephrenes ; but this casing would appear to have been after all, but a mere coating of stucco or concrete. The cement has worked out from between most of the blocks, leaving them in a degree disconnected, and numbers of them are dis- placed wholly or partially, or have fallen to the bottom, and have shivered into those fragments which compose the very soil for a great distance around the base of the Pyramids. No one will contend that there is any beauty whatever in these structures; even when perfect, they could have had none, and yet they must be objects of surpassing interest to any person possess- ing a spark of imagination. At first we contented ourselves with such a glance at them as could be got by ascending the steep hill on which that of Cheops and Cephrenes stand ; for, being on the point of commencing the ascent, the keen morning air reminded us that we had not breakfasted : so in spite of the vociferations of the Arabs who act as guides, and who hovered around us like a swarm of JV. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 4. 47 bees, worrying us at every step with their impertinent importunities, we returned to our tent, where we found our trusty Mohammed busily engaged in preparing a substantial breakfast of omelettes and excellent Mocha coffee, which being dispatched, we returned to the great Pyramid to make the ascent in earnest, having before only stood on the lowermost course or two of stones, and satisfied ourselves of the truth of the assertion, that the vast size of the Pyramids is only apparent when you are in actual contact with them ; at the distance of even a few hundred yards they lose half of their really gigantic proportions. Another peculi- arity about them, and which I have not seen noticed by any traveller, is, that when you approach within a hundred yards or less of the Pyramid, the fore-short- ening of the sloping face of the side you are looking on, has the curious effect to the eye of a perpendicular wall of rough masonry, tapering to a point of course, but all idea of its forming one side of a Pyramid is dispelled by this illusive appearance. Excepting from their extremely dilapidated condition, the Pyramids con- vey no impression of antiquity : for in this climate, no moss or lichen seems capable of existing, and the stones might have been piled up within the memory of a child, for any of those indications of age which the lower tribes of vegetation in damper regions impart to masonry through lapse of time; the colour of the stone is as light and fresh as if just quarried. I had no idea that the Pyramids stood on so elevated a site ; I do not know the elevation, but you look down from the table land at their base into the plain of the Nile below, as if from the summit of a very high cliff; indeed, their situation was one of the points on which my pre-conceived notions were completely at variance 48 LETTERS OF with the fact, nor have I ever seen any drawings that give a just idea of the position of the Pyramids and the scenery around them. The deeply undulating surface exhibits a scene of utter desolation, not a blade of grass springs upon, nor does the faintest tint of green enliven the pale brownish white waste, composed of debris aild coarse sandy gravel, mixed with fragments of pottery, and human bones thrown out from the tombs. The ascent and descent of the great Pyramid has often been described as an arduous undertaking ; it is certainly somewhat tiring, but I found both going up and coming down, very far easier than I expected, and excepting perhaps for ladies, it is no achievement at all. With by no means a strong head for climbing dizzy heights, I found I could look down from any part of the ascent without the least feeling whatever of giddiness, and should infinitely have preferred being allowed to scale the Pyramids unattended, and to have taken my own time in the ascent; but that, the officious im- portunate Arabs would never allow strangers to do, as they would thereby lose a chance of getting Balischeesh from him, were he simple enough to comply with their demands, which are almost incessant from the moment he arrives, to the instant he leaves the Pyramids. To a person in good health, the chief, if not the only source of fatigue in ascending, consists in the rapidity with which he scrambles to the summit, urged on by the Arabs, who will not allow him a moment's rest, but continue pulling and pushing him up the successive courses of stones ; when if he were allowed quietly and deliberately to select his own footing, he might reach the summit nearly as fresh as when he began to mount. The ascent is generally made at the north east angle, and the blocks are mostly so broken and disjointed, that fV. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 4. 49 in the space of a few yards of every course, there is sel- dom wanting a place for the feet to enable the climber to get on to the course next above him, without being obliged to raise himself up the whole height of the block, and wear out his knees in planting them on the top of the range : but the Arabs insist on taking you up partly by this exertion on your own side, partly by the pulling and pushing process on theirs, under the idea that your vanity will be gratified by arriving at the platform before any other of your companions. A considerable portion of the angle is broken away about two-thirds from the top, and here travellers generally halt for a few minutes to take breath, if the guides wUl let them, before completing the ascent. The descent, often pictured as quite formidable compared with the ascent, I found mere child's play, and arrived at the entrance of the Pyramid some minutes before my two com- panions, by jumping off each course to the one beneath, where a broken part did not present a convenient step for the foot. The day was, as every day has been, uninterrupted sunshine ; the cool season had just set in, and has since continued, after a summer of unpre- cedented heat and duration, up to the present date, (November Sth) ; a fine north breeze blew freshly the whole day, and my two companions allowed that they felt no fatigue or oppression in several hours rambling on the arid shadeless soil, in the full blaze of the sun, so temperate were his rays. The view from the top of the great Pyramid, lighted up by a bright sun, which is rarely obscured for a mo- ment, is glorious. From north to south, and at our feet, stretched the broad green valley of the Nile, its surface like a sea with promontories and isthmuses, shooting into and across it, with villages, palm groves, and 50 LETTERS OF exuberant tracts of cultivation rising from the bright placid siirface which is alive with countless multitudes of wild fowl, geese, cranes, ibises, pelicans, &c., over which numerous birds of prey, falcons, kites, and vul- tures, with which Egypt pre-eminently abounds, are constantly soaring. Beyond the limits of the inun- dation, and on either side of the river, stretched the great Lybian desert, its unbounded and unvaried surface of brownish white sand, raised by the wind into long ridges, or broken into shorter undulations, and the whole resembling a vast ocean in every thing but colour, agitated and swelling into billows. I ought, however, to add, that ranges of hills of white limestone, the same as that of which the Pyramids are built, are visible on the north and south, being part of a chain terminating in the Eed Sea at Suez, and of which the Mokattan hills also behind Cairo are a portion. These hiUs seem to run parallel with the Nile and Its principal branches on the side of the desert, and were possibly at one period its boundaries. We remained on the top for perhaps an hour or more, during aU which time our guides would hardly allow us a moment's peace, through the re- iterated clamour for Baksheesh, and to have the word given for descending from this, and mounting to the top of the adjoining Pyramid of Cephrenes in five minutes, which one of them actually accompHshed In four minutes and a half, In our sight. The distance between the two Pyramids, which are of nearly equal height, appears to be about two hundred yards, and the angles of each are exactly opposite one another. Two of our most active Arabs, on promise of a few piastres as Baksheesh, started for the race, running down the angle of the vast [incline like cats, and quickly disappeared from view, till on gaining the base, they fV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 4. were again seen coursing over the rough stony ground, during which run, one of them divested himself of every fragment of his scanty clothing, and in a few moments of time was scahng the second Pyramid, and was reduced by distance to so pigmy a size that I repeatedly lost sight of him if I took my eyes oif him for a moment, and I always had much difficulty to find him again, although he never could for an instant be hidden by any intervening object. The apex of the Pyramid is covered with the remains of the original casing, yet over this comparatively smooth surface the man con- trived to clamber with the facUity of a cat, and a moment after was seen waving his arms on the summit. He then descended the second Pyramid, and re-ascended the first, and as rapidly joined us again on the platform. The extreme softness of the stone offers great facility to those aspirants to such fame as can be secured through after ages by the simple agency of an inscription, and I am ashamed to say that I yielded to the national propensity, and found time to carve in large and deep letters the initials W.A.B. on the face of one of the altar- like blocks that occupy the centre of the platform, but could not add the date before our party proposed descending to view the interior. The entrance may be perhaps at one third of the total height of the Pyramid from the ground, and the descent into the passage leading to the great chamber, and the subsequent ascent to the latter, is the only arduous part of the undertaking, and it may justly be termed so ; as for ladles, it is really a serious affair, and rather an awkward one for any person. The descent to the mouth of the passage is itself exceedingly steep and slippery, being composed of huge granite blocks in- clining inwards and downwards at a pitch as sharp as 52 LETTERS OF the roof of any house, and nothing to hold on by. The first part of the passage is extremely low and narrow, but it widens and increases greatly in height, becoming at the same time so excessively steep that the com- bined support of the guides is required to prevent your sliding back, an event which would prove fatal, as the length of the incline is so great that a light at either end appears to be a star, as in the gallery of a mine, and at the lower extremity of this inclined passage is a sudden perpendicular fall of at least six feet, I should say, seven or eight, with very rugged sides, which I found a nervous business to surmount on returning, as the guides could hardly find footing for themselves whilst having to support each person of our party, and hteraUy to lift him down. In one part of the incline you have to waUc along a narrow ledge for several yards, not above a foot wide from the perpendicular face of the wall, and having a deep, rugged, and very slanting way below you on the right hand. On this ledge the Arabs enable you to walk by holding you by the arms, but I could not altogether overcome the feeling of insecurity, as there is not any projection whatever to lay hold of, and the stone you tread on is quite smooth, which with the precipitous character of the ascent, gives the appearance of some danger to the undertaking. I would strongly advise no nervous lady, and perhaps I might add, no nervous man, to attempt visiting the interior of the great Pyramid, for after all, there is very little to be seen, and that little can be conveyed by description nearly as well as by a personal view. The lights furnished by our Arab guides were utterly insufficient to show us the size, proportions, and colours of the chamber in which the sarcophagus stands. We could only see by shifting our position, portions of W. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 4. 53 the walls, and a dim discovery of the roof by holding up the candles : all else was one deep black vacuity of darkness ; with a stagnant suffocating atmosphere, never under 80°, and never renewed by ventilation : the only changes of air coming in and going out by the same long confined passage, which is the sole entrance to this sepxdchral chamber. We found no bats in it, at least if there were any, they did not show that they were at aU disturbed by our entrance, and we noticed nothing of their remains, at which I was surprised, having heard that they abounded so much in the interior of the great Pyramid ; but we found them in swarms in the adjoining sepulchral grottos hewn in the rock that forms the area around the second Pyramid. We saw so httle of the first or lowest chamber, and found the dust and closeness so disagreeable and oppressive, and the in- cessant importunities of the Arabs for Baksheesh, at this stage of their conductorship, so intolerable, that we agreed not to visit the second or upper chamber, as not likely to repay the toil of the ascent. Whilst looking, or rather, groping about in the chamber, I inadvertently stepped into an opening leading downwards from the floor to some passage below, and had not an Arab guide been most providentially close at my elbow, (no doubt teasing me at the moment for Baksheesh,) who caught me by the arm, and just saved me in time, my fall would have been a most serious, if not fatal one. The light held over the spot disclosed a very awkward looking cavity, sloping down at an abrupt angle, which the pitchy darkness prevented me entirely from seeing. I gave the old Arab a special token of my gratitude for his timely succour in the hour of danger ; but from the moment of the accident, till we quitted the Pyramid, he showed constant fear that his services Avould be 54 LETTERS OF unrequited, (as by an Arab, they certainly would have been), and continued to remind me of the aid he had rendered, tiU I was sick of hearing about it. We made it a rule to reserve all payments and gratuities for our return to the tent, and to the very last moment before striking it, and to shew not even a para to the guideSj as their importunities for Baksheesh would have been redoubled at the sight of the smallest coin. As regards robbery by open violence, or even intimidation, there is not the slightest danger in visiting the Pyramids now, whatever risk there might have been formerly ; the shewing these structures being at the present day carried on in a perfectly systematic manner, the right being a vested one of doing so, and the Shekh, or chief of the village, being answerable to government for the se- curity of visitors ; but pilfering may happen, and should be guarded against, by keeping watch on the pockets, and by having a trustworthy dragoman always about the personal baggage, &c. On leaving the great Pyramids of Cheops, we proceeded to view (the exteriors only), those of Cephrenes, Belzoni, and the fourth and far smaller one of Colonel Vyse, a description of which is of course unnecessary. This examination occupied us several hours, and we did not start for Cairo till 2 p.m. The day was heavenly, and though the sun shone out unclouded, not one of us felt his rays, to which we were fully exposed, in the least degree oppressive, even after aU our climbing, and disturbed rest the night before. The Pyramid of Cephrenes stands in the centre of a vast square or court, two sides of which are nearly perfect and form a series of tombs hewn in the solid rock with many curious inscriptions in hieroglyphics, besides bas-reliefs, some of which are in excellent preservation, and the figures of a few, representing fV. A. BROMFIELB.—^o. 4. oxen and other animals, extremely well designed. The two other sides of the square are distinctly traceable, but much encumbered by mounds of rubbish, and consist of arched tombs and sepulchres of sohd masonry, here and there in very good preservation ; but the Pyramid they surround is in as dilapidated a state as that of Cheops, excepting the small portion of casing which remains at the top tolerably entire. The third Pyramid, that called after Belzoni, is of very inferior size, but at the base it is partly cased with red granite in excellent preservation, and around it lie many granite blocks, together with fragments of columns, and sculp- tured stones, which must have been the remains of some building of wholly different architecture. The interior of this Pyramid has been opened up and examined by Belzoni. The fourth Pyramid is of very much smaller dimensions, and is surrounded by, or at least stands in a court or enclosure of tombs Hke that of Cephrenes, and its interior. Dr. Abbott tells me, is very interesting in an antiquarian point of view. All around the Pyramids are deep mummy pits, and about mid-way between the Pyramid of Cephrenes and the Sphinx, we saw lying on the sand two Hds of sarcophagi sculptured as mummies, one of which was in the most beautiful preservation imaginable, and covered with hieroglyphics: they were both of blue or dove coloured marble, the second somewhat injured. We also saw a very large tomb which had been excavated from the drift sand and rubbish by Colonel Vyse, but we could not gain access to It. The Sphinx I found with (the features much more mutilated than is generally represented in public ac- counts; indeed, very few lineaments of the human face remain, and viewed from behind, the head has a 56 LETT-ERS OF grotesque, almost ludicrous aspect, like an immense bob wig : but the front view of this wonderful structure is very striking : it is wonderful only, however, from its colossal size, for the stone is the same with that composing the Pyramids, and extremely soft. I search- ed carefully for some small memorial of antiquity, a scarabffius, or mummy of glass or earthenware, but could pick up notliing, although the Arabs have innumerable relics of the kind for sale at very low prices, which Dr. Abbott says are really genuine in most cases, and not, as asserted, manufactm-ed in England on speculation. Believe me, always. Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. (Letter V.) Cairo, November llth, 1850. My dear E- -L AM afraid there will be but little chance of any letter reaching you from me for perhaps four months to come ; I have arranged to form one of a party of three fV. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 5. to go up tlie Nile at the end of this week ; we propose to pass up at least as high as the second cataract, and should we find it practicable, to ascend the river still higher in Nubia. We calculate on being absent from Cairo three or foiu- months. My companions are Lieutenant Pengelly, and a young naval friend of his, Mr. Lakes, both on leave of absence for health. "We have bargained for an excellent boat with the owner, an Englishman of the name of Page, who has consented to let us have it at £ 22 per month. We take a crew of eight Arabs, including the cook, and the Reis or captain, a trusty man in Page's employ, who has been up the river at least a dozen times. Our expenses during the voyage, hire of boat, and living included, will be about £ 10 or £ 12 per month, each, which is cheaper than we can live for at this hotel, where the charges are about £15 per month, exclusive of out door expenses. Our boat has just been newly painted and repaired, and made per- fectly clean, which might not have been done by an Arab or Egyptian owner; the three cabins are very nicely fitted up with soft divans, glazed windows and Venetian blinds, and there is a small apartment in the stern. We rode down on Saturday to Boulak to inspect it, and were much pleased with its appearance. I expect to be close upon, and most likely within, the tropics before the shortest day, and so escape the cold of Cairo, which every one agrees in saying, is severely felt at mid-winter from the ill construction of the houses, the want of fire places, and the comparatively humid atmosphere. At present the chmate is glorious, ihe cool season has regularly succeeded the unusually protracted heat, and the thermometer is now in my apartment at, or a Httle under, 70° at 8 a.m., or ten 58 LETTERS OF degrees less than it was a week ago, whilst the morn- ings and evenings are too cool to be quite pleasant. I find additional bedclothes necessary, and many of the natives have put on their winter garments. StiU, the weather is quite warm through the day, fogs and mists arising about sunset, which chill the air, and dispose to colds and coughs. Barring a sHght cold in the head, picked up I suppose in the tent at the Pyramids, I am remarkably well, and enjoy the delightful warmth and perpetual sunshine amazingly. I have made several very agreeable acquaintances va. this city; Mr. Leider, of the Church Missionary Society, Mr. Trail, late of the Rhodes Gardens, who is very kind and attentive; Dr. Abbott, a zealous Egyptian antiquary, by whom I was invited to come and dine a la Turc, but which mode of eating a dinner, I never wish to repeat. Mr. Trail introduced me to the reading room of the Egyptian Society, where there is a valuable collection of books relating to Egypt, which I can go and consult at any time. Cairo itself is an endless source of amusement, and I have not yet seen a hundredth part of its interminable lanes, courts, alleys, and pictm'esque buildings. I have been in three mosques, where ten or fifteen years ago, a christian could hardly have found access without a special firman, and might then have been insulted when he entered ; now, things are so altered, that they do not in all the mosques even insist on the infidels taking off their shoes at the entrance, although that is rigorously kept up as respects moslems, in the more especially tidy ones. In most mosques large loose sHppers are kept for visitors to put on over their shoes. Two days ago, we went to see the dancing dervishes practise their ludicrous religious ceremonies in their mosques, which they do W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 5. every Friday. Each moslem who entered, scrupulously left his shoes at the door, whilst we, giaours, who formed a large party, were permitted to desecrate the holy pavement vnth our boots and shoes, and stranger still, two or three unveiled English ladies went with us, and were quietly permitted to take their places with the gentlemen, while not a single native woman was on the floor of the mosque, but they might be seen in numbers peering through the bars of the small windows in the dome upon the devotees and heretics assembled there. Cairo, November 15th. We are fast getting every thing ready on board the boat that Is to be our floating home for the next three months, and expect to com- mence our voyage on Wednesday the 20th. We trust to escape the disagreeable, though not intense cold of a Cairene winter. I find sudden changes of temperature here in the mornings and evenings, from 80° to 60°, or lower in the open air, and two days back with a smart shower, succeeded by drizzling mist. Although the Nile water has ceased to disagree with me, I cannot join in the encomiums bestowed on it, as being the most dehcious water in the world, for independently of its thickness, it has to me, even when filtered, a sensible taste, which the Alexandrian had not, and which is not improved, either in reality or ideally by transportation in the unsavoury looking skin, (that of the entire animal, the head excepted), in which it is carried to the consumer's premises. Such bottles are usually said to be goat skms, but from the great size of many, I suspect they are as often those of donkeys, if not of other animals, very disgusting looldng vehicles for one's daily drink, but use has akeady reconciled me to the thought that every drop of water I swallow has been in contact 60 LETTERS OF with these primitive casks. Cairo is an exceedingly- entertaining place, and the absolute certainty of scarcely a day's interruption to the bright sunny weather greatly enhances the enjoyment of perambulating it. The 11th ultimo was the first day that was completely overcast, like a November day at home ; the rest were bright and clear, as usual. If you have not read Lane's '' Modern Egyptians," pray do, it is an admirably minute and correct picture of the Cairenes, so esteemed at least by every one here. Will you set Wacey to work to procure for me a most admirable lithograph* of the great Pyramid of Cheops, it is so exact a likeness of that structure, that I shall be very glad to have it to hang up for a remembrance. TF ^ tF tF BeHeve me. Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. (Letter VI.) On Board the Nile Boat, Mart VictoeiAj On the river 20 or 30 miles South of Cairo, Tuesday, November 2Qth, 1850. My dear E- JL AM now fairly afloat with Lieutenant Pengelly and Mr. Lakes in our aquatic habitation, and probable * The great Pyramid from the North East taten by the Camera Luoida, and done on stone by Edward Lane, 1830, folio, lithograph, coloured, published by J. Diekenson. 114, New Bond Street. JV. A. BEOMFIELD.—No. 6. 61 domicile for three, or perhaps four months to come. We feel ab-eady quite at home, and exceedingly comfortable in the Mary Victoria, and hitherto have had very little experience of the usual annoyances which travellers on the Nile complain of. To our great joy we have escaped the insect disturbers of rest, though we have received terrific accounts of their numbers and prowess on the NOe, and the only intruders on our domestic peace, are a small family of rats, and a colony of cockroaches, both confining themselves to the lockers and timbers of the boat, and never appearing, at least by day, in any part of the vessel where their presence would be a source of personal annoyance, and our well arranged mosquitoe curtains would effectually exclude these, and every other nocturnal visitor from the beds. We found in Mr. Page, the owner of the boat, a very fair dealing and honourable man, who has spared no pains to render our voyage comfortable as far as the appointments of the Mary Victoria are concerned, and we consider ourselves as very fortunate in not having had to deal with an Arab owner, with whom a contract drawn up in very express terms in Arabic, and signed at the Consulate, would have been absolutely necessary ; a proceeding both troublesome and attend- ed with some expense, and one which rarely effects the purpose in view, of obviating any dispute or misunder- standing between the contracting parties, as the Arab boat proprietors seldom stand by the written engage- ment, but are ever ready to seize an opportunity of evading the conditions to which they have subscribed, and to take every advantage in their power of the ignorance and inexperience of tourists. We have a very young crew of eiffht men, (including the Reis or captain, and the steersman), docile good humoured 62 LETTERS OF fellows from Nubia or Ethiopia, with mildj honest countenances, who seem as happy as kings, and amuse us with their simple boat song, or rather chant, and performances on the small drum of the country, and on the tambourine. We have each of us a servant, having dispensed altogether with our dragoman, who is almost invariably a dishonest, or at least imposing fellow, very consequential, and unmanageable, and who requires many times the amount of wages given to a single Arab domestic. Saad, my own man, acts as cook on board, and serves us in that capacity very creditably; his wages are 200 piastres or about £ 2 per month for his double official duties, finding himself in food, and every thing besides during the voyage. These, with our three selves compose a little community of fourteen, Lieu- tenant P. assuming the supreme command of the crew and vessel, subject to the advice and opinion of the Eeis on matters relating to local navigation ; the latter, not- withstanding his extreme youth, conducting himself to- wards his people with wonderful dignity of deportment, never mixing in their games or songs, but generally sitting retired at the head of the boat, watching her progress, and ready to give his orders when necessary. Mr. Lakes not being well enough to accompany Mr. PengeUy and myself to the Barrage — a vast under- taking of the late Mohammed Ali, for damming up the waters of the Nile when at their height, and retaining them on the irrigated lands of the Delta longer than the time of their natural subsidence would allow of, — that gentleman and myself left Cairo in the boat on the 21st for the junction of the Eosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile, where the above works are situ- ated. We caught sight of them before sunset, but could not examine them till the next day; they are W. A. BROMFIJELD.—No. 6. 63 on a scale of great magnitude, but their ultimate com- pletion, ' from the enormous expenses already incurred, and the sum which wiU be required to finish the under- taking, is considered very doubtful, particularly when the careless, unenterprising character of Abbas Pasha is taken into account, as another impediment to carrying out his predecessor's grand conception. The Barrage is as its name imports, a vast dam of masonry, stretching across the two principal branches of the Nile, (those of Eosetta and Damietta), just at their point of junction with, or confluence into the main stream which forms the apex of the Delta. It is in fact an immense bridge of numerous slightly pointed arches, and with towers at its extremities, the arches are to be closed with flood gates to admit the Nile freely during the period of its rise, but, as I understand it, are to be partially closed when the inundation is at its height, and the river begins to fall ; when the water in that part of the valley of the Nile above the Barrage will be longer retained on the irrigated lands, the fertility of which, it is supposed, will thereby be much augmented. But it is doubted by many competent judges, whether any barrier, however solidly constructed, can resist the enormous pressure ^to which it must inevitably be sub- jected, especially during the period of the high Nile or inundation. It is feared that no sufficiently good foundation can be made in the bed of soft alluvium, even should the superstructure Itself prove firm enough to stem the current, and the weight of accumulated water when the sluices are closed. The works are not yet half completed, but are slowly going on by forced and ill paid labour, as in all other Government under- takings of the kind in this country. Having inspected the Barrage, we set oif on our return to Cairo, and 64 LETTERS OF passing the port of Boulak, we took up our position under the beautiful island of Rhoda, with its fine, but now half ruined gardens, over which I was not long since conducted, by the late curator, Mr. James Trail. Rhoda is reputed to be the spot where the daughter of Pharoah went to wash herself at the river when she discovered the infant Moses; the island lies partly opposite to Old Cairo, and consequently nearly on the site of ancient Memphis, and has the NUo-meter on its smaller extremity. The tradition carries plausibility with it, since Rhoda was, probably, from time immemo- rial a garden residence, and, from its retired situation, well suited for the ablutions of a king's daughter. Mr. L. joined us on the 23rd, and the next day we were fairly on our long voyage up the "river of Egypt," which has hitherto proved most prosperous and agreeable. My two companions are perfect gentlemen, quiet, and yet very cheerful, disposed to make the best of everything, and anticipating great enjoyment for the future. We all feel as much at home in om" little floating castle, as if we were ashore, or in Old England; the winds have hitherto been propitious, enabling us to make sail during the night, and to steal softly into ever increasing warmth, at least by day ; for the mornings, evenings, and nights, are very cold: but the glorious sun is never obscured except for a brief interval, per- haps once in a week, by some fleeting cloud, shining else unceasingly over our watery path. Within, we are amply protected from the cold of the night, by good bedding, clothing, and folding doors, and when the mosquitoe curtains, whose nominal office is now quite a sinecure, are arranged by our trusty squires, Saad, Mohammed, and Ameen, for the night, each sleeping place is as private and retired as if we slept in separate W. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 6. apartments. I have the utmost cause for seF gratulation in having brought out a gun with me : it has proved an admirable adjunct to our trip, not merely from the amusement derived from shooting, but as a means of replenishing our larder, daUy, with every variety of excellent fowl ; while our stock of poultry on board is reserved against the failure of game, and we are not, as we should otherwise be, condemned to that kind of food almost exclusively. It is only occasionally, on arriving at the towns or larger villages, that we can hope for the luxury of butchers' meat, mutton, kid, or as a great rarity, beef, all of Inferior quality to what we are accustomed to at home. Without our guns, we never set foot on shore, and invariably return from our walks through the palm groves and fertile fields of Egypt, with the materials for our morrow's breakfast and dinner. The spoils of the chase have hitherto been confined to wild pigeons, wild geese, ducks, and larks, which last are as common as in England, and exactly identical in species with our skylark, which we should hold it a sin to shoot at home; but here, we find it expedient to cast away aU such scruples ia providing for our daily mess. The crew are delighted with our foraging, as we are enabled to supply the second table as weU as our own with game, which is a welcome addition to their simple and frugal diet of bread, lentil soup, (the red pottage of Esau), or certain messes of vegetables, leeks, onions, cabbage with rice, or corn of various kinds; the NUe water being their only beverage. We invariably land at the Egyptian villages, many of which are large and populous, to shoot doves and pigeons ; the former abound in the extensive palm (date) groves, in the vicinity of the cultivated lands, and they commit great depredation on the maize and guinea corn : 66 LETTERS OF the latter are domesticated in huge pigeon houses, of which I have before spoken. I am sorry to say our travelling countrymen do not always observe the rights of property, but make a practice of shooting pigeons, heedless of the remonstrances of the pacific inhabitants, who are afraid of making more energetic demonstrations of disapprobation. We never molest the pigeons in the villages, but to shoot any stray birds outside, however near to the houses, is considered perfectly fair, and is never objected to by the people, who invariably behave to us with civility, as we stroll amongst their huts of mud or unburnt brick. The children it is true, some- times run away at the sight of us giaours, and the dread of the evil eye is occasionally manifested by an ex- pression of impatience from the women, if we indulge in a stare of curiosity or speculation at them or their occupations, but the dread and dislike of the Frank is fast wearing away, not in Cairo only, but all along the river ; and the probabihty is, that before many years shall have elapsed, the British voyagers on the Nile will be regarded by the dwellers along its banks, as their best, and certainly their most profitable friends. It is said that the ultimate occupation of Egypt by the English is looked forward to with considerable confidence by the Cairenes, and that they express much satisfaction at the prospect. It is certain we shall never relinquish the hold we have on their country without a struggle, and that we can never permit any of the great European powers, France, Kussia, or Austria, to gain a footing in Egypt, as the safety of our Indian empire would be fearfully compromised by foreign occupation of this country, if it did not even- tuate in its loss. W. A. BROMFIJELD.—No. 6. 67 Minieh, lat. 28. 7., December 2nd. A week's sailing witli light airs and calms, and an occasionally favourable breeze, has brought us thus far on our voyage, nearly half way to the great centre of attraction, Thebes ; a degree of progress we owe to the unwearied exertions of our willing and light hearted crew of Nubians, in tracking during the day ; for at night we generally now make fast to the banks tlU daybreak, unless the wind should be propitious, when we keep under sail all night, or a part of it. December 5th, Left Minieh this forenoon with a favourable breeze from the northwards, having been detained much longer than we intended by an accident to Mr. Lakes, who, when shooting very early on Tues- day morning with a Maltese gentleman, received a shot from the latter intended for a snipe, 27 corns entering in various parts of his person, and one striking the left eye, and wounding the white, a very short distance only from the transparent cornea, which happily escaped an injury that must have infallibly destroyed the sight of that eye. The pain at the moment, Mr. Lakes de- scribes as so intense that he imagined the shot had pierced his brain, and he fell involuntarily on receiving it. On recovering, he found that he could not see at aU with the wounded eye : he managed to reach the boat, a distance of several miles from the spot where the accident occurred, partly on foot, partly on a donkey ; and presented himself before us whilst we were at breakfast, informing us, with a smile on his countenance, of what had happened, and exhibiting to Mr. Pengelly and myself an alarming appearance, his face being perforated with several shot, and the left eye closed. Fortunately Minieh is the residence of a European district surgeon, who being a friend of the Maltese, 68 LETTERS OF whose mal-adroitness caused this distressing event, was immediately in our boat, and on examination, found the eye wounded as above related. He prescribed a lotion of acetate of lead, constantly applied, and then a poul- tice of linseed, intending to bleed his patient, should inflammatory symptoms shew themselves : but most for- tunately, the previously lowered system of Mr. Lakes was little disposed to take such inflammatory action, and contrary to aU expectation, he passed the night free from any pain worth speaking of, and has ever since been going on as well as could be wished. The sight of the eye is much obscured, but It is to be hoped that in a few days, the troubled humours in the ball wiU be absorbed, and replaced by others of the usual trans- parency, there being no reason to apprehend the smallest injury to the optic nerve. Mr. Lakes is suflS- ciently well to allow us to pursue our voyage, his eyes are of course bandaged, and he cannot employ himself for some days to come, but we have the greatest reason to be thankful that things were no worse. Mr. Lakes might have suffered the loss of his eye, and we must have returned in the boat with him to Cairo. We are now, thank God, again stemming the broad bosom of old Nile, to the wild music of our Arab, or rather, Berber crew, (the Berbers are a tribe of central Nubia), under a glorious, never ceasing sunshine, now so mild in its refulgence, that you would suppose your- self in England, were it not for the plague of flies, countless hosts of which have invaded our watery do- micile since we moored our little bark alongside the town of Minieh ; the plague of fleas has also com- menced, and begins to be troublesome to us at night. The banks of the river swarm with gigantic rats, which never fail to come on board whenever we stop, but they fV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 7. 69 seem to content themselves with running about the boat during the night, and gnawing the timbers, as we have not yet discovered that we are sufferers by their visits to our store lockers, or poultry crate, which is a matter of astonishment, considering the facOity of access they have to any article of food on board, and their numerical force and rapacity. We have two cats, ( as yet only kittens ), and a rat trap on board, but we cannot entirely succeed in expelling our unwelcome visitors. * * * » "With kind regards to all our friends at Kyde, and elsewhere, Believe me, always. Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. (Letter VH.) On boaed the Mart Victoeia, Nile Boat, Between Minieh and Manfalout, Central Egypt, December 6th, 1850. My dear E , XX CHARMING breeze is wafting us merrily up the Nile, and the plague of flies has ceased for the present, as by dint of brushing them out of the cabin with fly- flaps and towels, we have succeeded in reducing their 70 LETTERS OF numbers witMn the limits of moderation, and so long as we continue in mid-channel, we may reckon safely on enjoying freedom from one of the most serious annoy- ances to which travellers in Egypt are exposed. The nights are now always chilly, and the early mornings, till about nine o'clock, or even later, quite cold. Even in this quarter of the world, the tendency to extremesj evinced by the climates of the eastern side of all large tracts of land, is manifested; for Mr. Headland, the superintendent of the sugar factory at Ehodah, told me this morning, that the canes are occasionally much injured by frost in this latitude, 28°, and that in January sharp hoar frosts are not unfrequent, ice having been formed last winter there one fourth of an inch in thickness. Minieh is one of the largest provincial towns of Central Egypt, and has a garrison of 800 troops, the depot of four regiments of cavalry. Like all other towns in this country, it is a confused assemblage of narrow streets and alleys, made up of dirt and rubbish, and dilapidation ; the abodes of the lower classes mere mud hovels, and those of the higher, pigsty es on a larger scale. We had letters to M. Mounier, who has the management of a very extensive sugar manufactory close to the town, belonging to the eldest son of Abbas Pasha, a boy of twelve years of age. M. Mounier received us with great politeness, and conducted us over the works, which are very complete, where the sugar undergoes every process from its extraction from the cane, to its refinement as loaf sugar. The evaporation of the cane juice is carried on in vacuo, as in the great English refineries, and the purification is effected by animal charcoal, obtained from immense heaps of bones, calcined on the spot in proper furnaces. The machinery rr. A. jbeomfijEld.—No. 7. is of the most complete description, and consists not only of the sugar mills, &c., required for refining, but of powerful English steam engines for driving them, and pumps of great calibre for irrigating the land, of which 1500 acres are planted with canes. The labour in this, and another sugar manufactory at Khodah, a few miles further up, is forced ; and the poor workmen, to whom no day of rest is allowed, (not even Friday, the Moslem sabbath), are paid their scanty earnings in kind, never in money, and this payment consists of molasses or the refuse sugar, the dehvery of which is often with- held from them for weeks, whilst they are driven to the work chained together like convicted felons. The accounts we hear from persons of the highest respecta- bility, of the oppressive exactions and barbarities of the Egyptian government, and of the venality, falsehood, and dishonesty of every official in its employ, would appear incredible, did not every thing we see around us bear witness to their truth. The fearful picture of the desolation of Egypt drawn by the prophet Ezekiel, chap. 29 to 31, is a vivid representation of what she is at the present moment, and a signal instance of the fulfilment of Scripture prophecy. Between Minieh and Manfalout we stopped to deliver letters and newspapers to Mr. Headland, at Khodah, (which word signifies, in Arabic, a garden), the property of Ismael Bey. We saw there a steam pump, &c., for irrigation, and others in course of erection; the works are extensive, but the sugar is sent from the manufactory to Cairo to be refined by a large EngKsh firm in that city. The ap- pearance of tall factory chimneys vomiting out smoke, and huge boilers emitting clouds of steam, not to men- tion an occasional steam-boat puffing and splashing against the turbid stream, that has its sources in the 72 LETTERS OF heart of a barbarous and unknown land, divests, it must be owned, the valley of the Nile of some of that romance which early associations have attached to it, and perhaps speaks in significant language of its resto- ration at no very distant day to more than its ancient glory and prosperity. Mr. H. received us with great civility, and would have shewn us the works, had we not declined his offer on the plea that we were anxious to profit by the then favourable wind for continuing our voyage upwards ; besides which, we had no desire to see a second sugar manufactory, similar to, but less com- plete, than that which we had so lately visited, and with the details of which we were so well acquainted. We contented ourselves therefore, (I mean Mr. Pengelly and myself, for Mr. Lakes could not of course accompany us), with walking over the gardens of the governor of the district, in which Mr. Headland keeps a fine young lion, just five months old, and aheady nearly as large as a mastiflP, lately brought from Nubia, and intended, I believe, as a present for Abbas Pasha. The beast is allowed to roam at large over the garden, and although now only exhibiting the amiable traits of leonine juve- nility, he gives evidence in his rough play, of great strength, and when feeding, of some ferocity ; tokens, it will be well to attend to in time, as in a few more months, the unrestrained liberty he now enjoys, may be perverted to the harm of those about him. Manfalout, December 1th, "We arrived at this place, the ancient Crocodilopolis, about noon, and have now completed the half of our voyage between Cairo and Thebes. The wind has been exceedingly variable, and often, none at all, which has obliged us to get on by polling and tracking; but on the whole, we have made thus far a fair average passage for the time of year, for TF. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 7. 73 the month of December Is always considered unfavour- able for ascending the river, from the unsteadiness and uncertainty of the wind, which as often blows from the south as from the north; and<5alms, or very light airs are constantly intervening. We went ashore at every large town or village on our way. Manfalout is a small place compared with Minieh, and like every other Egyptian town, is principally built of unbumt brick. There are two handsome minarets belonging to the principal mosques, which last, with the residence of the governor, or other principal officer of the district, are the only buildings at aU distinguishable in the cities of this country, from the mass of dirty, dilapidated, or half finished habitations which compose them. A pretty little Egyptian boy, about ten or eleven years of age, volunteered to conduct us where doves were to be found, on which gentle bipeds, I am ashamed to say, we have been satiating our carnivorous appetites for this fortnight past, for which I can only plead by way of excuse, their delicate flavour, so superior to that of domestic poultry, and the means their death affords us of economising, or rendering the purchase of the latter almost unnecessary. The little fellow failed to find us many birds, but gambolled and frolicked along with us outside the town, perfectly at his ease with the giaours, and at last bade us adieu at the door of his mother's house. Mr. Pengelly took such a fancy to him, that he fain would have taken him away with us up the river, an arrangement we should aU have been equally charmed with, and to which the boy showed no sort of repugnance ; but his mother told us when we made the proposition, that she could not bear to part with him, although she had four other children at home, of which he was the eldest, and she appeared to enter- 74 LETTERS OF tain no distrust of our intentions. At parting, Mr. Pen- gelly gave him a small silver coin, value a quarter piastre, or about a half-penny sterling, no despicable baksheesh to a child in this poverty stricken country. The poor little fellow looked at it, and seemed for a moment as if hesitating to accept it, then deposited it on our encouraging him to do so, in a fold of his ves- ture, vrith an air of shame at becoming the recipient, which astonished us in a country where avarice is the ruling passion from the highest to the lowest, and where a present or remuneration is demanded by every man, woman, and child, for the smallest service. Manfalout boasts a tolerable bazaar, where, during our visit we were much amused by the curiosity of the rude Arnout soldiery, some of whom are quartered here, in inspecting our fire arms, my highly finished double barrelled gun exciting their greatest admiration, especially the strength and mechanism of the per- cussion lock, the principle of which the Oriental gunsmiths are but imperfectly acquainted with, and cannot yet imitate. The fineness of our Enghsh pow- der too astonished them exceedingly, and we parted with these intractable warriors on the best of terms. We find the people in every town and village we enter extremely well disposed towards us, ready to give every information in their power, and to shew us where any game is to be found ; only disagreeable when a bargain for meat, vegetables, bread, charcoal, &c., is negotiating, when their disposition to over-reach and haggle about a para seldom fails to shew itself: but this unpleasant intercourse we find it on every account best to leave to Mr. L's Nubian (Berber) servant, Ameen, who speaks the language, and knowing the value of the various articles we consume, conducts the greater part of our W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 7. marketing, rendering us an account of the money disbursed every day or two. Ameen is brother to the Nubian attendant on the hippopotamus in the Zoolo- gical Gardens, who accompanied the animal from its native country to England, where he still is. Ameen sometimes receives letters from his brother, who wishes him to join him at the Gardens, and says he has got money in a Savings' bank. He occasionally finds means of sending his brother Ameen little presents, such as an English penknife, but the latter does not seem to relish the idea of quitting Egypt for England, as from his known respectability at Cairo, Ameen is sure of a comfortable livelihood, as servant or dragoman to travellers going up the Nile. Ameen is much pleased at my ofi'er to become the bearer of a letter to his brother on my return home next year. The scenery for several days past has been interesting, the left, or eastern bank of the Nile, being uniformly bounded by a lofty limestone ridge, increasing in height and boldness as we advance southward, sometimes receding to a distance of several miles from the river banks, and at other times almost skirting the shore, and often jetting out into bold headlands, or occasionally rising into peaks of considerable elevation. This ridge, which now (at Siout, Dec. 9th,) begins to close in on the valley of the Nile on both sides like a vast and magnificent wall, is a continuation of the Mokattan chain which commences at the Red Sea, and is already of respectable height at Cairo, but here assumes quite a mountainous aspect. The range is the boundary of the great western (Lybian) and eastern deserts, and is per- fectly devoid, like them, of even a blade of grass; it now quite shuts out by its continuous elevation every glimpse of the desert, which before (at least on the east side,) 76 LETTERS OF often discovered Its ocean-like expanse of sand billows as we held on our course ; now, we see only the nearly perpendicular and stratified face of its abrupt, cUiF-like terminations, below which, is a broad or narrow strip of land diversified with rich crops of maize, guinea-corn, sugar, clover, wheat, colewort, beans, peas, carrots, cotton, and various garden esculents, as onions, garhc, cabbage, ochras, fennel, coriander, Corchorus oHtorious, &c., blended at short intervals with villages standing amidst extensive date groves, fuU of doves and wild pigeons, and with here and there a lovely grove of " Sani" (Acacia Nilotica), Gum tree (Acacia vera), which in Nubia and Abyssinia yields the Gum Arabic of commerce. Both these trees are now loaded with all their sweet scented flowers closely compacted into globose heads like little golden balls. The single fields of guinea-corn especially, are of incredible extent, and afford food and shelter to wild boars, and harbour packs of jackals that nightly serenade us with their melancholy noise, a whining kind of barking, much like that of a fox, but louder, and more disagreeable. Mr. Lakes shot the other day with his rifle, a very large jackal, when we were out together looking for game, and we anticipate fine sport during the moonlight nights, now coming on, amongst the ruins of Kamac and Luxor, where we hope to eat a pic-nic dinner on Christmas day, and to feast on plum pudding made by the hands of Saad, the only christian, by the way, of our party, besides our three selves, and who has proved a most able cook, in addition to his character as a steady, and we believe too, an honest servant. I cannot say as much for his skill as a laundress, for the display of which, did he possess It, our very limited means afloat afiford him little oppor- tunity ; for we quite forgot to add a board and smooth- W. A. BROMPIELD.-^o. 7. Lag irons to our out-fit on leaving Cairo. We dress in linen, which has only been washed over, and hastily- dried in the sun and air ; the fronts are all puckers, and the coUars the same, and without a particle of starch in them. Shaving, we have quite abjured in these wild regions as a tedious and unnecessary toilette operation : so we are all decorated with black bushy beards and moustaches of three weeks' growth, and since we have adopted the tarboosh, a close cap of scarlet cloth, with a huge tassel of dark blue sUk, worn over another small skull cap of cotton, called [a takeelzel, we are half mos- lem in appearance, if not in creed. I am sure our friends at home would laugh were they to see us, nor am I certain that they would not envy us our river life, and river home in this most splendid and rainless climate. The soil of the valley of the Nile, particularly that part left dry by the now receding waters, is a sandy loam of a deep brown colour, and of the consistence nearly of paste, so that like that, it is quite plastic, and can be kneaded with the fingers as dough. It is an error to suppose that the soil of the Nile is slime : it can even hardly be called mud when in its state of soft- est consistence; and its aspect conveys the impression of its exuberant fertility, which might be still further increased by the use of manures, and a proper rotation of crops, of which the Egyptian farmers have no idea. The towns and villages are constructed of unbiunt brick, made of the alluvial earth, and consequently pre- sent the same colour as that of the ground they stand upon, while the skins of the inhabitants are of hue very closely approaching that of their native soil, and the scanty clothing of the feUahs or agricultural labourers, as well as that of the greater part of the poor in the 78 LETTERS OF towns and villages, is a single wrapper of a very coarse and thick cloth, also of a deep brown, made probably of the undyed wool of the native sheep, whose fleeces are exactly of that colour, white sheep being seldom seen in this country ; hence, brown is the prevailing colour in an Egyptian landscape; the desert, the river, the people, the cattle, the houses, are all brown, or of a tint in which brown is the chief constituent; it is a swart land of grave and sombre colours, even the green of the few species of trees indigenous to, or cultivated in Egypt, is of a deep and dark, rather than of a hght and lively shade, that of the date palm and olive is greyish or glaucous ; of the acacia, mimosa, and sycomore, either dark or dull, viewed in the mass. I have seen nothing as yet like the verdure I was led to expect from the descriptions usually given by travellers in this country ; there is no lack of green it is true, but it is in strips or patches, intersecting which the native brown of the soil is ever presenting itself in strong contrast. No vegetation adorns either bank of the Nile along any part of the vast distance I have yet traversed from Alexandria hither (to Osiout); its shores gradually increase in height as we advance, and although of a rocky character in a few places, are for the most part com- posed of a soft dark brown alluvium, which is constantly crumbling, and falling into the stream, often in masses from a few hundred weight to several tons at a time, by which the course of the river is constantly under- going alteration : so that even were it navigable for vessels of any great burden, which the innumerable shallows and shifting banks preclude, any survey would in a few years be wholly obsolete and useless. Siout, Esiout, or Osiout, December 9th. We arrived at this place, at present the capital of Upper Egypt, fV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 7. and the ancient Lycopolis, after a tedious passage from Manfalout, owing to the wind faiUng us entirely. As we propose stopping a day or two here on our return voyage, to visit the tombs and grottos in the moun- tains behind the town, I will not now attempt a de- scription of a place imperfectly seen by us as yet, but will only give a slight sketch of its situation, which is the most picturesque of any town we have yet visited in Egypt. The valley of the Nile is here exceedingly broadj and the range of lofty hmestone hUls which shuts it out from the desert, recedes from both banks, leaving a wide plain of great fertility, and in a high state of cul- tivation, between the river banks and the hUls. The town is the third in size of those in Egypt, and is stated to have a population of 20,000 souls. Like Cairo, it is walled round, and the bazaars rank next to those of that city for the variety of goods they display. Siout is noted for its manufactures of pipe bowls, some of which we inspected, and were surprised at the elegance of the designs of the better kinds, and the finish of the work- manship. The limestone ranges on the western, or Lybian side of the vaUey, assuming here quite a moun- tainous character, are pierced with innumerable tombs quite visible from the plain below. The approach to Siout from the small village of El Elamra, which may be called its port, and about the same distance from the town as Boulak is from Cairo, is exceedingly pretty, passing along a broad raised causeway planted with willows, and running across fertile fields and gardens to the very gate of the town. We rode to the city on excellent donkeys to make purchases, foUowed by the greater part of our Nubians, decked out in their best attire, Ameen in particular, and our boy Mohammed, far outshining the others in the taste and gaiety of their 80 LETTERS OF costume, and bent like ourselves, on marketing at the last town where coffee, tobacco, and other requisites can be obtained of good quality. Having spent an hour or two in visiting the bazaars and the few other objects of interest it presents, we took leave for a time of the capital of upper Egypt, and returned to our boat at El Khamra. Believe me, Dear E , Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. (Letter Vm.) On board the Mart Victoria, Off Ekhmim, Upper Egypt. December, I2th, 1850. My dear E , ►JiNCE my last, dated December Qth, was finished, we have advanced as far as the town opposite to which I am now writing, towards the great centre of our Nilotic aspirations, Thebes, which we may confidently expect to reach in a week at farthest. Our voyage progresses merrily, if not rapidly, but we aU heartily PV. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 8. 81 wish the weather warmer In the mornings and evenings, for it is now so cold that we cannot remain up with comfort, even in our snug cabin, unless very warmly- clad. To day, we have been shivering in a north wind, even at noon, and sitting out in the fore-part of the boat has hardly been practicable at any hour, nor in- deed have we been able for some days past to enjoy the evening breeze at and after sunset ; whilst the mornings, till nine o'clock at least, are so cold, that the water we wash In makes our fingers almost numb when dipped into it. The whole of this day the sky has been without a cloud: the strong northern breeze blowing directly against the course of the stream, has raised its broad expanse into miniature billows, on which our little craft rocks as if at sea, and sometimes heels over in a manner rather alarming to nervous landsmen, under the pressure of the gale on her huge lateen sail. This obliquity of position is very well during the day, when every door is open fore and aft, and in case of capsizing, a chance of escape would be offered by clinging to the huU should she float, or of being rescued by the Arabs, who are all expert swimmers, from a watery grave ; but at night it is far from pleasant to feel oneself vibrating alternately between the two extremities of an inclined plane, with the multifarious impediments of bedclothes, musquito curtains, and two pairs of folding cabin doors bolted on the outside, interposed to bar free egress in an attempt to gain the open deck, the only part where assistance and safety could be looked for should a sudden flaw of wind from the lofty hills that now hem in the valley of Egypt, lay our little floating tenement on her beam ends. Our crew would gladly make fast to the bank every night at sunset, and after having tired themselves out with singing to the darrabatakako or small drum of 82 LETTERS OF the country, which we jocosely call the Arabian night's entertainment, quietly turn in, or rather lie about on deck, for the night ; but we are so anxious to reach the second cataract in the hope of being able to penetrate into Nubia, that we have issued standing orders to the Reis to make sail at all times of the night when the wind serves. The present cold weather is agreeable neither to ourselves, nor to our Nubian boatmen, and the desire of getting into warmer latitudes is shared by every one on board, each one of us looking forward with satisfaction to the prospect of passing the coldest part of the winter between the tropics, which we shall pro- bably enter before the new year dawns upon us. To-day has been the only one hitherto that could be called really disagreeable ; for though brilliantly clear, the sun had little power to temper the chilliness of the high northerly wind, which whilst it blew so keenly as to render exercise indispensable during exposure to it, raised clouds of sand from the adjoining desert hke mist from the river, which annoyed us when ashore by getting into our eyes, and powdering our clothes all over. Ekhmim, the ancient Panopolis, is a considerable town to all appearance, for we did not land there, as we ran past it with a cold north wind on the evening of this day, reserving our visit to its lions till our return. It was once celebrated amongst the cities of Egypt for its temples to Pan, and in later times for a line of powerful princes. The bills forming the abrupt termi- nation of the table-land of the desert on either side of the Nile, are here very bold ; and on the eastern bank rise immediately behind the city of Ekhmim, which with its palm-groves and the broad river now washing its very walls, once a quarter of a mUe distant from the W. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 8. banks, has a very picturesque appearance. The scenery of the Nile in Upper Egypt is far bolder and more romantic than I could have supposed, and appears to become more and more so as we advance. In one place the mountain verge of the eastern desert is actually washed by the river ; the western desert (the Lybian) is mostly much more distant, and looks like a majestic wall, behind which the sunsets, in cloudless skies, are truly magnificent. Girgeh, December IZth. This, almost the last town of any considerable size before reaching the cataracts, derives its name from St. George, the tutelar saint of the Copts, and is not on the site of any ancient place of note. We arrived here early in the morning, when Mr. P. and myself accompanied by Ameen, went into the town to lay in a stock of bread, and other articles of consumption which are beginning to run low. Girgeh forms no exception to other Egyptian towns, which are all pretty exact counterparts of one another in the main points of dirt, dust, dogs, and squalidness, although many of the villages are very pretty, embowered as they mostly are in groves of date-palms and acacias, (Acacia nilotica). Marketing in an Egyptian town is at once a very amusing and difficult business, involving a vast waste of time and words in the purchase of goods not amounting perhaps to sixpence in value. In another place I shall hope to give you some account of our bargains for flour, bread, charcoal, mishmish (dried apricots), and sundry otlier articles, mostly comes- tibles, some of which we find are always needed, or on the point of being exhausted. At Girgeh we bought four fine live turkeys at sixteen and nineteen piastres the pair, or, at a rough estimate, in EngHsh money, two shillings and eightpence and three shillings and twopence. 84 LETTERS OF We hope to be at Thebes in a few days, probably on the 18 th, if we can get a wind to take us ; for at present we have only calms, and light baffling breezes, with occasionally a brisk and favourable wind from the north- ward for a few hours ; and even this is often made of little avail, or rendered contrary, by the turnings and curves in the river, or in rounding the numerous islands and sand banks. When marketing in the bazaars and shops of Girgeh, (where by the bye, as well as at Siout, there are one or two elaborately designed minarets to the principal mosques,) we were beset by the natives offering us antique coins for sale, amongst which was an Enghsh farthing of Queen Victoria ! and stranger still, the top of a green glass bottle with the name of the liquor it contained or that of the vendor cast on it, such as we so often see upon these vessels in England. As the poor fellows who offered us these curious samples of antique numismatics, where wholly unable to read the inscriptions on them, I cannot doubt that the farthing and bottle label, were both proffered in perfect singleness of heart, with the genuine coins, of which several were purchased by Mr. P. for a few paras each. These were mostly Koman or Greek, and I believe were truly what they appeared to be ; as Dr. Abbott of Cairo tells me that coins and other relics of ancient times are commonly found at the present day, and that those offered for sale may in general be depended on as genuine antiques; but that articles of real interest or value are, as they ever have been, rare, and for the most part find their way into the hands of those who know how to turn their possession to advantage. December \5th. Since leaving Ekhmim, our progress has been exceedingly slow from the want of wind, the W. A. BR OMFIELD.— No. 8. 85 turnings of the river, and the numerous shoals and sand banks amongst which we have to work our way. Still, our voyage has not been without great interest, from the bold and beautiful scenery of the valley of the Nile in this part, and from the appearance during the last few days of a couple of Egyptian memorabilia, the Doum or Thebaic palm (Cucifera Thebaica), and Cro- codiles. The first of these lions of the Nile, shewed itself in a solitary specimen which caught the eye in a grove of date trees a few miles on this side of Ekhmim, which city is close upon the northern limit of the The- ban palm, beyond which it is only seen occasionally in a cultivated condition. Yesterday, however, (December 14tli,) we came upon them growing in plenty along the eastern bank of the river between Girgeh and Farshoot, whilst taking our evening ramble ; the trees bore plenty of fruit, but still unripe. The Cucifera Thebaica is a small palm, at least I have not as yet seen any exceed- ing twenty-five or thirty feet in height, and is remark- able amongst the trees composing this numerous family, for having the stems repeatedly branched at top in a forked manner, the branches terminating in a tuft of large fan shaped leaves, with prickly foot stalks. The fruit which is produced in long clusters, is of the size of a good large apple, and of a russet brown when ripe, consisting, like the cocoa nut, of a central nucleus, surrounded by a tough, fibrous outer coat, which when chewed has a sweet taste, compared with truth to that of gingerbread, which it resembles almost exactly ; but the outer coat, although eatable, is so dry and husky, and withal so sparing in quantity, and difBcult to separate from the nut it encloses, that as a fruit tree, this palm can never rival the date, and whoever has tasted one of the fruits, will I think hardly be at the 86 LETTERS OF trouble of eating a second. Perhaps the only ripe specimens I have seen, which were in the market at Cairo, might not have been the best of their kind ; but the fact that the fruit of the Doum palm is but oc- casionally brought from Upper to Lower Egypt, and is eaten only by the peasantry, and the poorer classes in the towns, proves the little estimation in which it is held, and which is probably equal to its real merit in its best state of perfection. At the time I am writing, (Mon- day evening, December \5th,) we have passed Farshoot, and the Doum palm now raises with the more majestic date tree everywhere along the river banks, and in some places grows by itself, or is the prevailing species. The scenery at this part of our voyage is extremely bold and picturesque, the banks of the river are very steep, and basaltic rock has appeared in some places cropping out at the water's edge, whilst the cliffs that bound the valley on the east present a magnificent as- pect from their mountaiaous elevation, and the vast sand-drifts that fill every nook and hollow from the deserts at their back ; and especially beautiful do they look when their bare yellow sides reflect the rays of the setting sun, which for some days past, has gone down in a glowing and cloudless, but cold sky. Nearly co- equal with the limits of the Doum palm, is the line that bounds the distribution of the crocodile northwards, at the present day ; for in ancient times it would appear to have ranged much lower in the Nile, and it is said to have even inhabited the Delta, and lower Egypt pro- perly so called. In our day, the crocodile is said first to make its appearance at or near Osiout, but we saw none of them during our short stay at that city ; but on Sunday morning (December lAth,) on arriving about a quarter of a mile from a sand bank, which we learned from W. A. BROMFIELD.— No. 8. 87 our boatmen was a favourite resort of these reptiles, and which is a httle beyond Girgeh, between that town and Farshootj we had the great gratification of seeing a whole herd, if I may use the term, of these river monsters emerge one by one from the stream as the sun gained power, and assemble on the sand bank, where we soon counted no less than sixteen of various sizes, huddled together, and evidently enjoying the warmth of the bright and unclouded morning-ray. The smallest of those we saw, as we watched them through our tele- scopes, seemed to be at least eight or nine feet in length, and several were absolute leviathan monsters, as hideous and terrific as can well be imagined, not less certainly than sixteen or eighteen feet long, with bodies as thick as that of a horse ; the huge jaws of some gaping wide apart as they lay listless and motionless on the sand, or occasionally dragged themselves forth firom the water to lie along like huge logs or trunks of palm trees, to which they have no inconsiderable general resemblance in the rough and scaly covering of their unwieldy forms, knotted vdth crested protuberances. We were so near them, that by aid of our telescopes, we could perfectly watch their motions, and discover their minutest cha- racters, longing all the time to be amongst them with our guns, and planning an attack we intend making on their strong hold when we return down the river. We propose to throw up a masked battery of sand the day previous to our attack, and landing on the beach before day-break the following morning, to open fire on them from behind our temporary fort as they come up out of the river to bask in the sun. We have furnished ourselves with balls of hardened lead expressly for the purpose, and trust to be able to achieve the feat of shooting a crocodile, and carrying off his jaws and scuU as trophies 88 LETTERS OF of our campaign against the ancient monster deities of Egypt's river. The young specimens of the crocodile of the Nile that are occasionally brought alive to England, give no idea v\rhatever of the hideous deformity, and ferocious aspect of the full grown animal. A more re- volting creature does not exist; yet I believe that to man, they are seldom, if ever, dangerous, being extremely vratchful and timid, waddling slowly down to, and sli- ding into the water, on the too near approach of any person; and we observed the sand banks occupied by numbers of aquatic birds, geese, cranes, pelicans, &c., walking about the outstretched monsters as if possessed with a feeling that they were in no peril of their lives in the society of these ugly reptiles. A boat, in round- ing the bank, fired a gun at the crocodiles, but not within range, which had the elFect of sending them all pell mell into the water, but in a few minutes afterwards the noses of one or two might be seen emerging, and soon the sand banlj became repeopled with the fugitives. We little expected at this season to find crocodiles half so numerous, seeing how cold the morn- ings are now, and how low the temperature of the Nile is, compared with that which it attains a few months later or earlier than the present. Always my dear E., Your aflFectionate Brother, W. A. B. W. A. BROMFIELD.— No. 9. (Letter IX.) On Boakd the Mary Victoria, Near Kenneh, opposite Dendereh, December IGth, 1850. My dear E- X GLADLY avail myself of the opportunity afforded me by the place we are now approaching, of posting these sheets at the last town in Egypt from whence letters can be dispatched to Cairo with any certainty or regularity. I am not without hopes of finding one from you at Kenneh, where, if the wind does not fail us, we shall arrive to day, or early to morrow : at all events, I trust to have tidings from you on our return from Nubia. WiU you be so kind as to let Mr. Lawrence have the two little packets of seeds of Egyptian plants ; he wiU no doubt raise them in pots, and keep them carefully from frost : it is very probable that both may be planted out in the summer. I am collecting everything in the shape of seeds I can find, but there are not many of the native plants at present in flower, much less in seed; and I fancy I shall reap a richer harvest in this way on our return voyage, than in the ascent of the river. Tuesday Evening, December I6th. A brisk wind is fast wafting us to Kenneh on the opposite bank of the river, near to which stand the magnificent ruins of 90 LETTERS OF Dendereh, on which we hope to feast our longing eyes to-morrow. The weather is gloriously serene and sunny, and were it not for the coldness of the nights and morn- ings, would be perfect, for the temperature even at mid- day is that of the mildest summer weather : however this night it is somewhat warmer, and our merry hearted Nubians are amusing themselves, and, as they would fain believe, us also with their native Berber songs, with drum accompaniments ; a species of musical entertain- ment we could well dispense with at this moment when we are engaged in making up our budgets for home, but we cannot find it in our hearts to stop this noisy, but innocent mirth ; for no boat's crew could behave better than ours have done, poor fellows ! I shall look out carefully for small antiquities among the ruins of Dendereh, Thebes, &c., and believe that I can be put in the way of taking casts of the smaller inscriptions and hieroglyphics, as you take the brasses in a church, as Mr. P. has just shewn me one taken off on common paper by himself. Pray remember me most kindly to all our friends at Eyde, Believing me, always, Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. jr. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 10. 91 (Letter X.) The Mary Victoria Nile Boat, off Kenneh, December \lth, 1850. My dear E- VV E set out at an early hour this morning for the town of Kenneh or Ginneh as it is sometimes written, it is situated about a mile or rather more from the Nile, which however when at its height overflows the flat ground which lies between it and the town. The approach is exceedingly pretty, almost as much so as that to Osiout, the valley of the Nile being here ex- tremely picturesque from the grandeur of the lofty craggy barrier that shuts it in from the Desert on either side. Both the valley and the river are here of great breadth, and the former is richly adorned with groves of lofty date pahns interspersed with doum palms which are now abundant in all the fields, and of which I have to day seen some very fine specimens in full fi-uit. The country is everywhere beautifully green with the tender springing wheat and barley, which are here about as far advanced as in England in April or May, and will be ready for harvesting in April, or at the end of March. At this time the Guinea com, of which vast quantities are raised in Egypt, is being gathered in, and the sugar harvest will succeed a week or two later. The quantity 92 LETTERS OF of garden vegetables grown In Egypt is prodigious, the whole valley of the Nile may be regarded as one great kitchen garden, and all the ancient plant deities of Egypt still find favour in the sight of the modem inhabitants. Besides the vast fields of wheat, barley, maize, Guinea corn, and other cereal grains, you every- where meet with extensive plots of Nile's exuberant land, bearing heavy crops of carrots, coleseed, onion, leeks, lentils, lupins, chick peas, ( pois chiches of the French, garvanzos of the Spaniards,) lettuces, cabbages, a species of radish called figi, cauliflowers, French beans, beans, ( for which Egypt has always been famous ) ochises, ( Hibiscus esculentus,) melolleyehs ( Corchorus olitorius,) besides melons, water-melons, gourds, vegetable marrow, tomatos, sessama, and other esculent seeds or roots, while much of the soil is devoted to sugar, cotton, indigo, (indigofera argentea,) rice (in the Delta chiefly,) clover, coriander, mallows ( Malva rotundifolia in Egypt grown in quantities as a pot herb,) tobacco, ( chiefly I think the inferior species,) and other products, all of which one meets with in the open fields, not merely in gardens, and in quantities that would astonish our farmers and market gardeners at home. It is no un- common thing to see a field of maize or Guinea com extend over a mile or two in length along the banks of the river : those of wheat, barley, and other cereal grain are much smaller, though still of considerable extent : the fields of clover, carrots, and other crops, are perhaps not usually greater in size than in our own country. Kenneh is a town of some importance (the ancient Cfenopolis or Neapolis,) the residence of a provincial governor, and garrisoned by troops. It is famous for its manufacture of porous earthen jars called guUahs, used all over Egypt for cooling drinking water, they W. A. BROMFIULD.— No. 10. are made here, and at a few other places higher up the Nile, for the purpose of exportation. A given number of the gullahs is joined together in the water, and covered with palm branches, then a second stratum of pots is placed above, and the whole, forming an immense raft, is floated down the river by boatmen, who reside on these singular structures, to Cairo, Alexandria, and the intermediate places along the Nile. Numbers of these rafts have passed us for the last two days, each composed of some thousands of jars or rather jugs, bound together with the palm tree bands, the lower stratum floating upright in the water, bearing up the flooring on which the second stratum is placed, and across this last layer spaces are left for the crew to pass along between the frail cargo whilst on their voyage downwards, which of course is chiefly effected by the currents, aided at times by the wind. We found the bazaars at Kenneh as well supplied as those at Siout, and having finished our marketing there, and delivered our dispatches for England addressed to the British Consul at Cairo, into the hands of Seyd Hosseyn, a venerable old gentleman who acts as consular agent at Kenneh, and with whom we took coflee, and a whifF of the chibouk in the open street, in front of the house, Mr. P. and myself set ofi" with Ameen on donkey-back, in full anticipation of dehght to view the first lion on our way to Upper Egypt, the temple of Dendereh, (the ancient Tentyris,) situated about two miles and a half (by the way we took) from the western bank of the Nile, and nearly opposite Kenneh. Our path, (for here there are no roads,) lay between richly cultivated fields of Guinea corn, cotton, &c. among date palms growing in clumps, or standing singly, interspersed with beauti- ful tufted tamarisks, and gum trees, (acacia nilotica,) 94 LETTERS OF generally called Sant. Here the doum palm is a most conspicuous feature of the landscape, and noble specimens intermixed with the date, and the two other trees just mentioned, constitute beautiful groves and glades be- tween the river and the temple of Dendereh. In lower Egypt the date palm forms vast groves both native and artificial, and every village almost stands in, or by, a planted palm wood. The trees in that part, and in central Egypt, are tall, slender, and graceful, but the stems are usually single, seldom two from the same root, and still more rarely, three. In Upper Egypt, on the contrary, the date groves are far less formal than in the lower and central districts ; and whilst the trees rise up, as there, to sixty or seventy feet or more, this palm grows isolated as well as dispersed in picturesque clumps, and from one and the same root spring not only two and three, but four, five, or six stems rising obliquely, each stem bearing its noble crown of leaves at the summit. The intermixture also in Upper Egypt of the humbler, but not less beautiful doum palm, which does not grow wild in Lower Egypt, contributes to the vast superiority of the former over the latter country in natural beauty. I had no previous idea of the lovely features of the superior parts of the valley of the Nile, in innumerable places, as between Siout and Thebes, which are so much bolder than anything I expected to see. But to return to Dendereh. Very soon after starting, we caught sight of a low looldng building in the distance, standing on the verge of the desert, and on the edge of the cul- tivated ground, small, and extremely un-imposing in appearance. At that point of view it resembled some unfinished structure of modern times, it might have been a coach house and stables, or a range of shops or ware- houses. A feeling of disappointment came over us when rV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 10. 95 we ascertained that this mean looking building must be the celebrated temple we were in search of ; as it was the only object of the kind in sight, and stood in the direction in which we ought to look out for the renowned ruin. As we continued drawing nearer, our disappointment seemed fated to remain undiminished, but when we arrived at the noble pylon or entrance gate, and far more so, when we stood at the threshold of the magnificent portico of the great temple of Athor ( the Egyptian Venus ), and looked across its colossal row of sculptured columns into the great hall beyond, disappointment gave way to delight and astonishment. Every square foot of this vast edifice, which at a short distance seemed to us so mean in design, and insignificant in dimensions, is covered with hieroglyphic writing, and though said to have been executed in the decline of Egyptian art, many of the figures and human profiles excited our admiration by their beauty. I will not attempt a description of this or of any of the other vast structures of ancient Egypt with which I hope speedily to become acquainted, because you can easily procure books that describe them both better, and more fully than I can do. I shall therefore only observe that Mr. P. and myself spent the remainder of the day in exploring the elaborately sculptured, and finely pro- portioned chambers of the great temple of Dendereh, and also descending into its subterranean passages and rooms, all covered like those above ground, with an endless profusion of hieroglyphics and figures in bas- relief. These subterranean galleries and chambers are perfectly dry, but the heat and closeness are excessive, and in some places, the effluvium from the bats' dung is extremely annoying and irritating to the eyes and 96 LETTERS OF nostrils, whilst these animals themselves alarmed by the lights and noise of visitorSj fly around in the narrow passages in swarms, sometimes extinguishing the candles that serve to direct the explorer along the mystically carved labyrinth, the mazes of which he has the bold- ness to attempt threading. On our return voyage we propose to visit Dendereh, and every other remarkable monument of antiquity, of which we are now indulging ourselves with general views only; and we trust that Mr. L. who, I regret to say, is too unwell at present even to leave the boat, will then be a sharer of our enjoyment. We live merrily, and on the whole very comfortably in our Uttle bark ; nevertheless we have not an inch of room unoccupied, and could wish that our state and store rooms were better divided for the purposes to which we are obliged to put them. Our faithful and trusty steward Ameen reposes nightly under the loose planking of the main deck forward, between our stock of bread and potatoes on one hand, and a pile of oranges en papillotes on the other, whilst a set of small shelves against the partition which divides my sleeping cabia from the adjoining one, tenanted by Mr. P. and Mr. L., and which is at the foot of my bed, is a perfect Itahan warehouse stored with bottles of pickles, curry powder, vinegar, cases of preserved soup, sardines, powder and shot, &c. besides sustaining a little dispensary in the form of a medicine chest, which has proved of great to our invalid fellow traveller. At the head of use Mr. P's and Mr. L's bed places, are shelves containing our travelling library, which is pretty voluminous for the space we can allot to it, and as you may suppose, the books relate chiefly to the country we are traversing. Under the bed places, part of the space is taken up with JV. A. BROMFIELD.—'Eo. 10. 97 lockers, in which are stowed away many bulky articles, and amongst the rest, a frail basket completely filled with five para or ftiddah pieces, to the amount of £5 sterling; which small coin is indispensable in the country towns and villages of Upper Egypt and Nubia, where change for the larger silver or gold coin of the empire is very diflScult to be obtained. In this cabin too, there hangs a map of Egypt (that published by the Society for the difiusion of useful knowledge), a copy of which I purchased at Cairo for two shillings, and had mounted on mill-board expressly for consultation duriag the voyage, and which we find extremely convenient. Our crew of boatmen and our three servants, Saad, Ameen, and the boy Mohammed, inhabit the fore part of the vessel; and the former sleep on the deck, wrapped in their cloaks and other garments, or occasionally on the roof of the cabin, which is also the abode of our live stock of poultry. The workmanship of these native built Nile boats is rough and unfinished beyond belief, neither doors nor windows are even toler- ably fitted, and there is not a screw used in the whole structure ; the very locks and bolts, such as they are, are merely fastened with nails to the wood-work. Our mosquito curtains now serve us excellently to keep the cold breeze at night from chilling us by the many entrances the boat builder has provided ; but to which, during the day, from nine o'clock till five in this glorious climate of never-ceasing sunshine, we have neither cause nor desire to put a stop. Luxor Village (Thebes), December 20th. Arrived here after a very slow but pleasant passage from Kenneh, the weather for the last few days perfectly cloudless, not a speck visible in the pale milky sky, a delicate thin blue haze enveloping the distant crags and peaks of this 98 LETTERS OF part of the valley. The great difference of temperature however, between the day and night, continues to be felt most unpleasantly by us all ; for, although so close on the tropic, the cold at night, and in the early morning so late as nine o'clock, gives the impression on the system of active frost, or a very near approach to it, when the thermometer indicates 50° or 48°; but the instrument, being fixed against the entrance to the cabin on the wood-work, which in our upward voyage is exposed to the sun all day, retains a temperature through the night above that of the au- on the river. This is the only situation in which it is practicable to hang it, where it can of course only give an approximation to the truth. The heat indicated by it is much too high during the day, when the air in the shade is seldom much below or above 70°, and, at dawn, is probably not under 40° at this season. On making fast to the shore at Luxor, our boat was beset by a host of guides and donkey boys as numerous and importunate as at Cairo, or at an Enghsh watering-place; but dispensing for the present with their services, we employed the little daylight remaining in taking a cursory survey of Luxor and its antiquities. Believe me, Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. JV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 11. 99 (Letter XI.) On board the Nile Boat Maet Victoria, Upper Egypt. December 23rd, 1850. My dear E JVxt last sheet left us at Luxor, on the evening of the 20th, moored close to the shore for the night, and just starting to take such a hasty glance at its lions, as we at present propose to indulge ourselves with: intending to make their more intimate acquaintance on our return down the mighty river, whose broad stream we shall then have navigated. The town of Luxor is like every other in Egypt, an accumulation of mean houses of unburnt brick, and mud hovels, but the beautiful country in which it stands on the wide and fertile plain of Thebes, and the massy ruins of the great temple of Amunoph III and Kameses 11, together with the colossal obelisk, the fellow to which now adorns the Place de la Concorde at Paris, rising high above the modern walls, give Luxor a more imposing aspect from whatever side you approach it, than any of the places we have yet seen on the banks of the Nile. But excepting the obelisk which stands isolated in the middle of the town, and is truly a fine object, from its gigantic size, height, and perfect condition, one must be deeply imbued with the antiquarian spirit, 100 LETTERS OF to fall into raptures with any other of the existing re- mains of Theban magnificence. The ruins at Luxor struck Mr. P. and myself, as ponderous structures, quite devoid of elegance of design, and finished execution, and, excepting the great pylon (portico or gateway), forming the principal entrance to the temple, and facing the river, little else of these remains is in a state to give us much idea of what the efiect of the entire building might have been in the palmy days of the Egyptian Monarchy ; so much are they encumbered with and en- croached upon by the mounds of rubbish, and miserable hovels of more recent times, crammed into every avail- able corner of the ancient walls which could be made subservient to the uses of a modern population. The colossal statues of Kameses II are more than half con- cealed by the accumulation of soil around them, and are besides much mutilated. The sculptured ornaments and hieroglyphics are not numerous at Luxor, and seemed alike poor in conception and in execution : the closer examination we intend making on our return, may disclose beauties unseen during the very superficial view we took on our upward voyage. I fear however, that the gorgeous magnificence of the temple at Dendereh, where grandeur, taste, and skill are so strikingly united with admirable preservation, quite unfitted us for relish- ing the heavy, and comparatively unadorned, barbaric, and now dilapidated structures of Luxor, thrown down and half buried beneath the surface of a soil, the accu- mulation of many ages, or hidden in great part by the squalid homes of the Egypt of our day I must however again except the noble granite Obelisk of one enormous block, the height of which I am unable to state, but some idea may be conveyed of its vast proportions, when I mention, that amidst my antiquarian researches, having JV. A. BROMFIELD.—'Eo. 11. an eye to the replenishment of our larder on board, I was unromantic enough to fire at what I took for a pigeon, perched like an idol-bird, on the very apex of this stupendous monoHth, but which proved after all, to be an uneatable bird of prey, so indistinct were objects rendered by the distance from the eye, although that interval was but equal to the length of a single block of granite. I was prepared not to expect any very strik- ing remains at Luxor, as compared with other places that compose the aggregate of ruins named Thebes, for there is no special town, village, or other locality, so called, now in existence: still, I must own to feehno- considerable disappointment in what I did see, and in this I had the sympathy of my fellow traveller, who declared himself quite as much dissatisfied as I was. The next morning, December 2\st, we mounted our donkeys (as excellent as those at Siout) and with their drivers, and Ameen and Mohammed leading the caval- cade, we passed over part of the beautiful and extensive plain of Thebes, followed by a host of unbidden and clamorous guides, to Kamak, about a mile and a half from Luxor, with which it is supposed to have been joined by a continuous avenue of sphinxes. The valley of the Nile at Thebes is extremely wide, and the never- ceasing mountain barrier that forms its boimdary on both banlcs, rises here into outlines the most abrupt and picturesque possible, and encloses a vast plain teeming vnth inexhaustible riches in fields of corn, cotton, indigo, and esculent vegetables of every description. The day was magnificent, the usual pale blue sky was without a speck, and a thin hot haze softened down, without im- pairing, the distinctness of the distant craggy steeps of the Theban mountains. High rose our expectations, as on nearing the object of our morning's ride, we sighted 102 LETTERS OF the massive columns and gateways of Kamak, through the long avenue of sphinxes or dromos, once the path by which votaries went from Luxor to the vast temple that formed a fitting termination to so magnificent an approach. But alas ! we were doomed to feel disappoint- ment greater than any experienced by us at Luxor the day before. On entering the precincts of the great temple, we became painfully sensible how much anti- quarian enthusiasm, and the proneness of travellers to make the most of every remarkable object on their route, had exaggerated the extent and magnificence of Karnak. I am quite ready to admit that the general efiect of the buildings here when perfect, must have been grand, per- haps extremely so; the avenue of sphinxes, when entire, must have formed a noble approach to the temple, to judge from the most perfect of those remaining; but even the few in any tolerable preservation are but parts by which to judge of them when whole ; the rest are reduced to small and shapeless blocks of stone ; and im- agination is obliged to supply that uniformity m mag- nitude, and excellence of workmanship, without which they must have failed in grandeur of effect. The truth is, we expected to find the avenue of sphinxes in much better preservation, and our imaginations less drawn upon to fill up deficiencies in this, and in most other portions of the edifice. The pylon or gate, at which the above avenue terminates, is undoubtedly a fine object as a whole: but the hieroglyphics and sculptures are poorly executed on this, and as we thought, on the most part of the structures at Karnak, — numbers of them being little better than such rude carvings of natural objects as a plough boy, or any other country lad, might easily execute with his knife in stone of equal softness, — flat, tame scratches, instead of deeply chiselled and boldly JV. A. BR03IFIELD.~No. 11. 103 designed figures, which we thought to have seen here aa at Dendereh, and have since seen in the beautiful, and richly wrought temples at Esne and Edfou. The columns in the grand temple at Karnak struck us both forcibly as being inelegant and poor in design, the ornaments of the capitals especially paltry, and in the worst taste, as if belonging to the earhest state of Egyptian art ; which is one great reason perhaps why these ruins are so extravagantly be-praised, and their beauties magnified by the professed and zealous anti- quary, in whose eyes age is the greatest of recommenda- tions, and the highest of merits. The remains at Karnak are for the most part in a very dilapidated state, and greatly encumbered as usual with mounds and heaps of rubbish both of ancient and modern date, causing the various parts to appear isolated, as if originally uncon- nected with one another, which detracts from the general effect by destroying the primitive unity of design. Others have expressed themselves disappointed with Karnak, and many more would avow the same feeling had they the courage or candour to do so, or were dis- posed to view Egyptian antiquities with a sober un- prejudiced eye, seeing things as they really are, with all their defects as well as beauties, and being determined not to let imagination betray them into such extravagant encomiums as we meet with in many authors on this and on other subjects. A popular writer on Egypt gives an overdrawn picture of the "teeming vitality" of the Nile, enough to frighten any timid nervous person from approaching its banks. I can however safely assure such persons, that glancing lizards are very far indeed from innumerable, being only seen at intervals, small, harm- less, and pretty ; except it be their near relation the huge unwieldy crocodile, or the supposed friendly fore- 104 LETTERS OF Warner to man of his being nigh, the monitor Uzard of the NUe, of which we have seen an occasional specimen basking in the sun along the stream, twice or thrice du- ring our voyage, and one of which Mr. P. had the good fortune to shoot with my gun from the boat, and which measured three feet and a half in total length. Of snakes, I have not fallen in with even a single example, although always on the look out for these reptiles, par- ticularly the cobra of Egypt, and the asp of Cleopatra, I.e., the Cerastes or horned viper, both of which, I hope to meet with ere long; but reptiles of this class (ophidians) and indeed of every other except the batrachians (frogs and toads) are seen but at intervals, or not at all, and " countless insects of unimaginable forms " reduce themselves to a few dull, sombre looking and sober paced beetles ; a large hornet is common, but inoiFensive unless attacked ; mosquitoes, in the warmer months, and common house flies, are, it must be owned, a serious annoyance in Egypt ; but with these two ex- ceptions, and that of cockroaches on board the craft on the river, insects are remarkably few, both as individuals and species in the valley of the Nile, and are like the indigenous plants, not conspicuous in general for their size, colour, or variety. The writer I have alluded to, speaks of the " rank vegetation of the Nile : " in what this rankness consists I am at a loss to conceive, for the NUe is in this respect unlike most other rivers, in that it nourishes few or no marsh plants along its banks ; no swampy jungles, or beds of reed intrude on the deep brown alluvium that edges the stream along every part of its course that I have yet traversed. On the higher parts of the rich sandy loam (absurdly called the slime of the Nile by high flown writers), flourishes the only rank vegetation to be seen anywhere, in the shape of W. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 11. 105 luxuriant fields of corn, cotton, tobacco, lentiles, lupines, and the thousand gifts of nature, which would be most welcome in its rankness to the poor hard working, and oppressed fellah, were he permitted to reap the fruits of his labour for his own benefit, and not for that of another. Beyond this alluvium all is dry and sandy, the earth is clothed with a few species of harsh coarse grasses, axaongst which, the Halfeh grass (Poa cynosuroides), is preeminently abimdant, and groves of date palms and acacias stretch inland to the rocky or sandy barrier that marks the limit of the valley of Egypt: beyond this again is the absolutely naked, solitary, sea-like desert, which in some parts, as for instance, near Assouan, which we are now fast approaching, comes nearly to the very margin of the Nile itself. The sacred lotus of Egypt is not to be found in the entire valley of the Nile in modern times, having long since become extinct, and perhaps it was never indigenous there, but maintained by the care of man in a cultivated condition only. The ornithology of the Nile, is as to its subject, less susceptible of ex- aggeration than its zoology, for the multitudes of water fowl that haunt its stream, may justify the use of the word " swarming." The same expression might be applied with almost as much correctness to the various birds of prey that hover over its banks, far exceeding in variety of species, and number of individuals, any amount of the same tribes in other countries ; and, in- deed constituting one of the most singular features of this strange and interesting land. Vast are the flocks of geese, pelicans, storks, cranes, spoonbills, flamingoes, shags, and other aquatic birds that overspread the river. • « » * Believe me, always, Your affectionate Brother, W. A. B. 106 LETTERS OF (Letter XII.) On board the Nile Boat Mary Victoeia, about 8 miles below Dekkeh, Nubia. January 5th, 1851. My Dear E- -fi-N opportunity will be given me on our arrival at Wady Halfeh (the second Cataract,) or perhaps sooner, of dispatching these two letters to Cairo. I am ex- tremely vexed at being in a position which debars me, and has so long debarred me, from receiving news of you; but I am thankful at the same time, that the channel of communication homewards has not been cut off, so that I can allay your anxiety from time to time, by means of Government or travellers' boats returning to Cairo. We are now wending our way slowly, but surely, to that Ultima Thule of most Egyptian travellers, the second Cataract at Wady Halfeh, enjoying the sun and warmth of the tropic, which we passed yesterday about noon, near Kalabshee. The evenings are no longer anything like so chilly as they were but a few days since : but the mornings are as fresh still as in Eno-land, and cool for the latitude. At Assouan, where we arrived on the 30th, we had a very violent gale of wind for nearly twenty-four hours, from the northward, which made the air feel quite chilly all day on the 31st, and fiUed the atmosphere with sand from the desert. TF. A. BROMFIELD.-J^o. 12. 107 We expect to reach Wady Halfeh in four or five days; from whence we propose setting out with six camels, our two servants Ameen and Mohammed, our Egyptian cook Saad, and one or two of the boat's crew, for Dongola and Meroe, about fifteen days journey into the interior. We are promised plenty of sport, gazelles and other game ; and in a large island in the Nile called Argo, there is a solitary hippopotamus well known to the natives, who can at any time find out his haunts, and point him out to strangers. To him we mean to pay a visit, and if possible shoot him, but they say, he bears a charmed life, and laughs at balls, dozens of which his impenetrable hide has defied already, so we can hardly hope to carry off his head for a trophy ; still it will be something to see a hippopotamus in his native wilds. Our servants and crew, (with the exception of the cook Saad, who is an Egyptian, and a Coptic Christian), being all Nubians, are delighted at finding themselves in their own country, and our young reis and the pilot have already visited their native villages, where we allowed them to go ashore to their friends for a few hours. Ameen, as a native of Meroe, and Mohammed, of Dongola, are quite overjoyed at the prospect of seeing their remote homes once more, for the love of country is very strong among the Nubians. We have engaged the pilot who conducts our little bark through the intricate navigation of the river between the first and second cataracts, to take charge of the boat at Wady Halfeh for two piastres per diem, (about four pence sterling,) during our expedition to the interior of Nubia, or more properly, into the Berber country, for Nubia Proper is included in the district between the first and second Cataracts. This pilot, we 108 LETTERS OF took on board at Assouan, where his contract was signed, sealed, and delivered with due form and ceremony before the Turkish authorities in our presence. We purchased an excellent tent of a most obliging Frenchman named Venderg, a gun merchant, on his way down the river to Cairo from Kordufan with a cargo of that article; for which we paid only the small sum of 200 piastres, or about £2 sterling. We shall leave most of our clothing and other things in the boat, taking no more than is absolutely necessary for the expedition, which will occupy us a month at least ; and probably six weeks will elapse before we return to Wady Halfeh, and commence our return voyage down the Nile. We do not expect to fare very luxuriously on our route, but we take with us a good supply of rice, coffee, and mac- caroni,and our guns will continue no doubt, as heretofore, to furnish our larder with wild fowl, and, as 1 hope, venison also, for meat is not to be looked for in Nubia, and is execrably bad all over Egypt, with a few oc- casional exceptions. Poultry, we shall no doubt, be able to procure now and then, should our supply of game run short, and excellent vegetables my fellow travellers can always enjoy, for the valley of the Nile is one vast uninterrupted kitchen garden, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the second cataract, a distance of a thousand miles ; and I believe it continues to be such a garden of herbs far beyond that point into Abyssinia. In this land of ancient Ethiopia, or the Cush of Scripture, where we now are, the wheat and barley are at present nearly a yard high, but not as yet in ear; though they will be ready for the sickle in March. The maize and Guinea corn harvest is just concluded, and the cotton, of which great quantities are grown from below Thebes upwards, is in flower, and W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 12. 109 young pod. Senna, both wild and cultivated, is a great article of transmission hence to Cairo and Alexandria for exportation to Europe, and the Khenna shrub, so much used for dyeing the nails and hands red, is another valuable production of Nubia, and plentifully adorns the banks of the Nile ; whilst whole fields of onions, lentils, lettuces, beans, lupins, peas, radishes, and most of the remaining vegetables of Lower Egypt, cover both sides of the river in this narrow valley of Nubia, besides tobacco, the castor oil plant, and a host of leguminosae unknown in British gardens, such as ochroes, cocoas, &c. &c. On we glide daily towards the south, under a glori- ously bright unclouded sky, and a delicious temperature that scarcely any one would at present consider in the least oppressive : but when we get fairly within the tro- pics as at Meroe in 19° lat. the advancing season will soon begin to make itself felt, and we must expect very hot weather a month or six weeks hence, and to ex- perience the Khamseen winds in full force on or before our arrival at Cairo. Here already, above the first cataract, the population has much diminished, the villages are smaller, fewer, and farther apart, the inhabitants are darker than in Egypt, and most of them go aU but quite naked, and are usually armed with a spear and shield; they are more independent in their bearing than the fellahs of Egypt, and more cleanly in their habits. The valley of the Nile between the cataracts is pretty, but somewhat monotonous ; a very narrow strip of highly cultivated land on each side of the river, often not a hundred yards wide, separating the latter from the boundless deserts of moving sand : but the rude grandeur of the granite and sandstone rocks Is in many parts extremely 110 LETTERS OF imposing, especially at Assouan, and above the cataract at Philffi, and higher up. The scenery of the first cataract itself, is extremely fine, and has been likened with some truth to that of Glengariff in Ireland. I am collecting and drying all the plants I can find in the valley of the Nile, from Alexandria to our farthest limit, and regret exceedingly not having brought out a set of my own drying boards, with a copious supply of paper and mill-boards, as I am reduced to using a very inferior and troublesome apparatus lent me by Mr. Trail; my own little boards being far two small to be of any service, and I have been forced to put up with a very coarse paper, purchased from time to time at the various towns along the Nile : since however, the sun is rarely obscured, or hides his face for a moment, in this climate, I can manage to dry the specimens very fairly with paper which it would be hardly possible to make use of otherwise, with the limited quantity I have at command ; but the drying of the plants goes on speedily and uninterruptedly the whole day long, by placing the boards strapped together on the roof of our boat's cabin in the sun, which of course, is never off the roof between the times of rising and setting ; a heavy stone being laid on the boards to give additional pressure ; and the whole being taken in at night, on account of the dews, which are sometimes very heavy on the river. From October to April, is the vegetating season in Upper Egypt and Nubia : from the middle of April, to the middle or end of September, the great heat and drought arrest the growth of, and vnther up herbaceous plants of most kinds ; but the very few indigenous trees, being naturally evergreen, resist the intense heat of the long, sultry, cloudless summer, uninjured. The flora of the Nile valley to its termination in Nubia, is of a W. A. BBOMFIELD.—No. 12. m singularly northern character : more than nine tenths of the entire vegetation being made up of annual or perennial herbaceous plants of an ordinary looking weedy character, strongly contrasting with the tropical type of the cultivation, sugar, indigo, sessame, cotton, Guinea corn, &c. The number of species is not great, and many of the plants are extremely social or gre- garious, which is very unusual in countries so near the equator. Few of the plants of Egypt, and (as far as I have yet seen), of Nubia, have much beauty of blossom, brightness of colour, or gracefulness of form ; and they are almost aU, either scentless, or unpleasant in odour. The mere lovers of " wild flowers " would find them- selves grievously disappointed in Egyptian botany ; to them the country would be a flowerless land ; but to me, this pecuKarity is extremely interesting, proving, what I have always advanced, that there is no necessary in- separable connection between warmth of climate, intense and continuous solar light, and a richly coloured, and varied vegetation : as otherwise, how can it be accounted for that the rich, damp, alluvial soU of the Nile, and the dry hot sands beyond, are incapable of sustaining a ve- getation equally varied and luxuriant as that of our own bleak fields at home, or half the number of pretty flower- ing-plants on the same area of ground ? Not a few of the Egyptian and Nubian plants are common weeds in England, or, if not identical in species, belonging to the same genera with our own, and are not a whit more handsome in form and colour, or superior in size to their British congeners. It is not a little strange to find the hosts of warm aromatic sub-shrubs and perennials, that so abound on the shores of Spain, the south of France, Greece, and other countries of the Mediterranean, dis- appearing almost entirely on the still more southerly 112 LETTERS OF and sunny valley of the Nile, where they are replaced by a few sparingly distributed tropical, or sub-tropical plants, whilst the remaining vegetation is of a type more plain and northern than that of the countries just named. The same northern type prevails in the other departments of nature's creation. Very few of the birds have much beauty of colouring, and those com- monly seen, are either identical with, or are related to the species with which we are familiar in England, such as the common sparrow, the grey wagtail, the Eoyston crow, the sky lark, which abounds in every field ia Lower and Central Egypt, the Nile plover, very like our common peewit, (also a native,) turtle doves, blue rock pigeons, besides the kestrel, hen-harrier, and various other hawks identical with, or closely resembhng British species, as are the owl, kingfisher, and many of the water fowl, some of which latter, as the flamingo, egrets, &c., are common to this country and southern Europe. Of course, there are many birds exclusively African, as pelicans, paddy-birds, &c., but these are sel- dom distinguished by any elegance or gaiety of plumage: although indeed there are certain ex- ceptions to this general sobriety of colouring. As regards insects, I wiU only mention that of the few butterflies that flit about the fields of this land of un- clouded sunshine and high temperature, that which is by far the most frequently seen, is our English painted lady (Cynthia Cardui), a species common with us in certain years, during the latter part of summer and autumn ; I have noticed as yet, but a single insect of this order at all superior in size to the largest of our English lepidoptera : the rest few in number, as regards the species, and not greatly abounding individually, do not exceed our native butterflies either in point of size. W. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 12. 113 or beauty of colouring ; which is another proof of the position before alluded to. January/ 7th. We are drawing very near to Korosko, and to Deyr, now the capital of Nubia, at both which places we shall arrive to-morrow if the wind is in our favour, which it will probably be, as the reign of the north wind seems now established for the season. To day we did not make much progress, having been obliged to track most part of it, as, in this tranquil cli- mate, the wind is perpetually falling to calm, and the bends and windings of the river are continually render- ing a fair wind a contrary one, and vice versa. The day after to-morrow we shall probably see Abousembal, or Ipsambul, one of the finest remains of Egyptian tem- ples existing ; and on the 10th or 11th, we hope to reach the foot of the second cataract at Wady Halfeh, where we shall probably remain " two or more days, to hire camels, and procure some necessaries for our journey into the interior. WiU you tell Mr. Lawrence that I am collecting seeds of every kind that I can meet with, including some of the vegetables grown in Egypt for the table, which are ciirious ; but most, if not aU of them, are like the fruits, much inferior to those of our own land, and this, when even of the same species with English ones, as cabbages, carrots, lettuces, &c., but the onions are greatly superior to ours in size and mildness. I intend to forward to England from Cairo all the seeds I shall have collected up to the date of my transmitting my dried Flora of the valley of the Nile : as I cannot of course, travel into Syria encumbered vnth these bulky and perishable articles. Although we are now between the tropics, the nights are chilly, obliging us to keep the doors of our cabin closed towards evening : the mornings too, for a couple H 114 LETTERS OF of hours before and after sunrise are disagreeably cool, and even during the whole of this morning till about 1 p.m. the fresh northerly breeze drove Mr. P. and my- self to sit in the sun at the fore part of the boat for warmth. "We now seldom see a saU besides our own ; we are at this moment moored as usual for the night under the steep westward bank of the mighty river whose current we have been stemming for forty three days, through nearly a thousand miles of boundless desert on either hand, and which in this part of our course is never half a mile from either bank, mostly within a hundred yards ; and in many places, you have but to reach the tops of one or other of the banks, to find yourself at once amidst the sand-drifts and savage rocks, that with but few interruptions stretch across the whole of this vast continent of Africa. The views indeed of the desert as we glide onward, are extremely picturesque in every part of the Nile valley, but most particularly so on ap- proaching the first cataract, when vast masses of daxk coloured rocks rise from the ocean of white, yellow, or reddish sand into rugged hills piled in unimaginable con- fusion one upon another, the palm and acacia-clad banks of the Nile running like two narrow edgings of brightest green along an undulating band of silver, for the river here is much clearer than lower down its course, even in Upper Egypt. At this hour (10 o'clock p.m.) my two fellow-travellers have retired to their berths, the reis, crew, and our servants are all stretched on the deck of the boat, or on that of the cabin over our heads, wrapped up in their blankets, capote, or other garments protect- ing them from the cold night air, fast asleep ; whilst the only sounds heard are the chirping of crickets on the bank above us, and the melancholy howl, or yell of troops of roving jackalls in the adjacent desert. It is the W. A. BROMFIELD.—^o. 12. rapid radiation from the boundless waste of treeless and herbless sand and rock into the dry unclouded heavens, ■which goes on unceasingly from sunset to sunrise, that causes the extraordinary and trying inequality of tem- perature between day and night, which at this season more particularly,, is one of the few inconveniences of which travellers have to complain in this chmate. Such is the extreme dryness of the air in the desert, that a plant I gathered in my walk to day, though only car- ried in my hand for about an hour and a half, was by the time I returned on board the boat, utterly unfit for pressing, not being merely withered, but actually dried up, parched and crisped, as if it had been put into an oven. Koroiko, Tropical Nubia, January 8th, a little below Deyr. We are lying here, made fast under the steep bank of the river for the night. This is a very small poor place, but the emporium of the caravans from Kordufan with goods destined for the Egyptian capital. And now I fear that I must maintain an unwilling silence for some weeks, till we again return from living in tents, and journeying on camels through deserts and barbarous tribes, to our snugger and more civilized mode of hfe on board the Mary Victoria. * • * * With kindest regards to all friends. Believe me always. Your aflPectionate Brother, W. A. B. 115 116 LETTERS OF (Letter XIII.) Khartoun, at the junction of the White and blue Rivers, Lat. IS^N. Long. 34''10. March 20th, 1851. My dear E >5iNCE my last was dispatched from "Wady Halfeh for Cairo, through the favour of a gentleman going down the river, our little party has penetrated to this remote town, almost in the very heart of tropical Africa, and, thank God, we are all quite well in health and spirits. In this region of dust, dirt, and barbarism, I am reduced to the necessity of using pens made of reeds' the only ones in use among eastern nations, and which are neither lastiiag, nor easy to write with ; I hope, how- ever, to make this letter tolerably legible, and to send it off before leaving Khartoun, which we do to-morrow, in a boat we have engaged to carry us a day or two up the White Nile, and, on our return, to Berber, a voyage of eight or ten days from hence, where we have an order from the Pasha (Governor of Khartoun), for camels across the desert to Korosko, where we rejoin our little boat the Mary Victoria, which has been await- ing our arrival there for the last two months, to convey us back to Cairo, whither we trust to find ourselves safely transported about the third week in May. I can only give you a very short abstract of our journey jr. A. BROMFIELD.—No. 13. 117 hitter from Wady Halfeh. Our caravan consisted of seven camels, three for ourselves, and four for our ser- vants and luggage, tents, and water-skins. The way- lay partly along the banks of the Nile, and partly next the desert, amidst scenery of a totally different de- scription from any I had met with before ; that of the river, extremely picturesque in many places ; that of the desert, wild and savage in the extreme. Although between the tropics, the nights were very cold, with occasional heavy gales of wind, during one of which, about two o'clock in the morning of the 17th, our tent was blown over completely, and we were left exposed in our beds to a keen blast, and obliged to rise, clothe our- selves, and get the tent up again. At eight o'clock, a.m. on the 18th (more than an hour after sunrise), the ther- mometer suspended on a bush near the tent, stood at 51° only, and at half-past seven on the morning of the 19th at 42° ! a cold felt to be very penetrating after the great heat which often prevailed during the day ; but the excessive dryness of the air in the desert prevented any injurious effects resulting from these great and often sudden changes of temperature. On the 21st our progress was delayed for some hours by an accident to our servant Ameen, who was stung in the hand by one of the great yellow African scorpions, that had been brought to me by one of the camel drivers. Ameen, foolishly relying on a supposed immunity from the venomous effects of these and other noxious animals, which he believed had been communicated to him by a serpent charmer at CairO for a consideration of eleven piastres, actually grasped the scorpion with his bare hand, and it instantly struck him at the root of the second finger of the left hand. He suffered intense paia for a .few hours, with a feeling of great coldness all over. 118 LETTERS OF numbness on the left side of the body, indistinct vision, sickness, and other constitutional symptoms of rather an alarming nature. I had none of the proper remedies with me for scorpion stings, such as ammonia, and ipecacuanha ; but applied laudanum to the wound, and brandy internally ; the next day the symptoms had quite subsided, and Ameen felt well able to continue the journey. The scorpion was one of the largest I had ever seen, and was about five inches in length to the end of the tail. On the 27th we encamped on the fine island of Argo, the largest of those formed by the Nile, being thirty miles in length. The mirage was very strong on the desert this day. On the 31st we arrived at Ourdi or New Dongola, a miserable collection of mud built hovels, one of which we occupied during our stay. The air we found excessively cold at night, and tiU eight or nine o'clock iu the morning, frequently making us shiver even in the sun, I forgot to mention that when in Argo island, we visited the two remarkable colossal Egyptian statues, supposed to be those of Osiris and his wife Isis, with their son Horus. They are about twenty- two feet in length, of the red granite of Syene (Assouan) in Upper Egypt, which is not found near this place. Both statues have been thrown down, and one broken asunder in its fall ; and it is remarkable that not the smallest trace exists of any temple to which they might have belonged. We left Dongola on the 3rd February for Meroweh, near the ancient Napata, the supposed capital of Ethi- opia in the time of Queen Candace, the ruins of which stiU exist close beneath the fine mountain of Grebel Berkel ; in the craggy face of which, is a rock temple covered with hieroglyphics, and finely sculptured JV. A. BROMFIELD.— No. 13. figures. On one side of the mountain stand a number of stone pyramids, and a few miles further are those of Neuri, of both which I shall give an account presently. From Ourdeh, (New Dongola) to Korti, we took a boat on the Nile, a wretched craft, full of dust and dirt, happily free from vermin, but of the roughest possible construction, and extremely incommodious: the re- mainder of the journey was performed on camels, across the desert to the opposite bend of the river at Abou Doun El Haweshab, a very prettily situated village, nearly facing the now almost deserted town of Meroweh, and which we reached on the 17th ; taking up as usual our quarters in the place, by dispossessing some one of his house without ceremony, the rent of which was handsomely paid for at one piastre per diem, or rather more than two-pence. The same morning, my camel becoming suddenly ungovernable, set off without the slightest warning at full gallop, throwing myself off first, and then the saddle with the articles attached to it, gun, water skin, carpet bag, &c. Luckily that part of the desert was of a soft and sandy, not as in many places, of a stony rocky character, or my fall might have been as serious as it was in reahty matter for jocular remark from my two companions and the Arabs. The great height of a camel's back renders a faU in such a case more dangerous than from a horse, but the generally slow, staid demeanour of these most odious and disgusting of all domesticated animals, causes a similar occurrence to that which befel myself to be much rarer than on horseback. I must say however, that much as I dislike the animal for its manners and disagreeable qualities, and the negative nature of the few good ones it possesses, that I have found camel riding to be infinitely better than I expected, after the 120 LETTERS OF first day or two ; the fatigue is almost nothiBg of a day's journey of from eight to ten hours, the pace is very easy, enabhng you to compose yourself to a reverie as you traverse the burning track of white, yellow, or red sand, or the glowing rugged rocks under a cloudless sky, hour after hour, with little feeling of weariness ; whilst from your lofty seat on the camel's hump, you constantly enjoy a good view of the country you are passing over at the ordinary pace of from two and a half to three miles an hour. At Abou Doun El Haw- eshab, we engaged donkeys early on the morning of February 18th to convey us to the Pyramids of Neuri, (so called from a neighbouring village of that name), the more distant of the two groups from Meroweh, or about five miles from that deserted town. These Pyramids stand like their more renowned fellows near Cairo, on the verge of a desert, amid drift sand, and heaps of rubbish, but no tombs. They are very numer- ous, placed without the smallest attention to order or arrangement, many are still so far entire that their out- line is preserved, and like those at Memphis they appear whole at a distance, but on a nearer inspection, they will be found equally disjointed and dilapidated. These Pyramids, and those of Napata or Gebel Berkel, are exactly of the same form and dimensions : I can guess that they are on an average about forty feet high, and their angles of inclination are much more acute than those of the Egyptian structures of the same kind ; like them, those of Neuri, have, now at least, no casing. The stone they are built of is of two or three kinds, a white and extremely soft limestone, similar to that of the great Pyramid of Geezeh, and one or two species of red or yeUow conglomerate, of the coarsest, and most crumbling description that can be conceived. As the fV. A. BROMFIELD.—Eo. 13. 121 country here is within the limits of the periodical tro- pical rainSj it is surprising how these Pyramids can have so long resisted the influence of the weather, made as they are of such perishable stone. On the 19thj we set out on donkey back for the ancient supposed site of Napata and the Pyramids adjacent, usually known as those of Gebel Berkel, from the fine rock or mountain of that name, under which both are situated.- The ruins of Napata are not extensive, but the remains of several buildings still exist above ground, and what is singular, some slender columns are yet erect, and tolerably per- fect, whilst every other part of the ruin is thrown down. In the face of the mountain is a rock temple, with some of the best designed and executed sculptures and hiero- glyphics I have seen in Egypt, and the capitals of the columns are very tastefully designed in a style quite diflTerent from any pattern I ever saw before. We ob- served one or two finely polished blocks of grey or blue granite, with sculptured cornices, (perhaps sarcophagi), but nothing else of note amongst the ruins. The weather to-day and yesterday, was remarkably cold, with very high east wind, and clouds of sand from the desert. We observed the names of one or two English travellers on the walls of this remote and beautiful rock- temple, which faces the ruins of the ancient city, of which no doubt, it formed one of the most considerable edifices. The Pyramids stand on the desert, about three quarters of a mile from the ruins, and are thirteen in number ; eight are merely crumbling masses of stone ; the remaining five are generally speaking, in a wonder- ftd state of preservation, almost as entu-e as when first erected. Their average height, as we found by measure- ment, is about forty-two feet, they are all built in steps, but the stones are not above thirteen inches thick, and it 122 LETTERS OF was by counting the number of courses, that we were enabled to ascertain the height of the whole structure. The angles are very neatly finished with quoins of whiter stone than the rest of the building, but the apex of each Pyramid is gone. The acuteness of the angle of inclination was such, that I could not venture to mount the courses, (as I easily did those of the Pyra- mids of Cheops) without a feeling of giddiness soon coming on ; but my sailor friends achieved the ascent without difficulty, and carved their names on the flat top of one of the principal and most perfect. These Pyramids, like those of Neuri, stand grouped without arrangement, contiguous to, and at all angles to each other, and each Pyramid has a stone porch, adorned with sculpture and hieroglyphics : sometimes the roof or ceiling of the porch is painted in colours, still In very tolerable preservation, but evincing a rude state of the art ; some of the sculpture is extremely well executed, and very curious as to subject and design. We found very few memorials of European travellers upon these Pyramids, so we held ourselves excused in gratifying the national predilection for this way of acquiring im- mortality, by carving our names enclosed in an oval or cartouche, and each name again separately on different Pyramids. JSIine, I cut at full length, and in large Roman letters, with month and year, inside one of the porches, the roof of which was badly painted with lotus wreaths, just over the name of Prince Puckler Muskau, who has left no memorial of the date of his visit. In one Pyramid only, did we find any entrance from the porch, all the rest were closed with blocks of stone : in the exceptional case, the opening led only to an irregular cavity, as if purposely broken up in search of a sepulchral chamber; but the penetrated Pyramids, W. A. BROMFIELB.—^o. 13. 123 here and at Neuri, appear to shew that they were all constructed solidly from the first, the centre being filled with loose stones or rubble. On our return to our hovel at Al Dour, through beautiful fields of ripe, and ripening, as well as springing barley and wheat, we visited the now nearly deserted town of Meroweh. There is a work entitled " Hoskin's Travels in Ethiopia," which is highly spoken of by Sir Gardner Wilkinson ; in this book there is doubtless a full account of every object of interest along the route we have taken from Wady Halfeh to Khartoun, and as such, It would be worth your while enquiring for, or ordering it for the Club. February 20th. Left Al Doun El Hawesheh on camels, across the desert for Metummeh, a large straggling place a few miles above Shendy, but on the opposite side of the river, and to which, since the de- struction of the former place by the troops of Mohammed Bey Deftender, in revenge for the murder, by the chief of the province, of the youngest son of Mehemet Ali in 1822, the trade of Shendy has been transferred. The Wadys, or little valleys between the hills in this desert, contain many trees and thickets, and there is good water at intervals, but we were forced at first to put up with that from a deep stagnant reservoir of natural formation in a rocky bason supplied by the periodical rains, and which now emitted a putrid smell, and was fiUed with various impurities. The next day, we gladly changed it for spring water, at a group of wells to which aU the neighbouring tribes resort to water their flocks at stated Intervals. The heat in crossing this desert was very considerable, but the nights were always dehciously cool, and indeed unpleasantly so at day-break, and for some time afterwards, but the air on the desert is so 124 LETTERS OF perfectly dry, that we slept every night under the canopy of stars, often with a cold and high wind blow- ing on our beds, and even on our persons, without the slightest ill effect. The following are the temperatures, as taken by my pocket thermometer : — 1851. Shade. Svm. Time. Feb. 24th, desert between Meroweb & Shendy. . 87o. . 114