Arabs that lined the shore-that gallant boy refusing to leave the post of duty which his father had assigned him, while the flames crept nearer and nearer to the magazine below, and the deck around was strewn with the dead and the dying, that poem moved my feelings as it had never moved them before. Mr. Agnew's pupils will find it in some of their reading-books. III.-Alexandria to Cairo. 1. Having seen all that we desired to see in and about Alexandria, on the 24th of November we passed, in four hours, by a good modern railway, over the one hundred and twenty-five miles from Alexandria to Caï'rō “The Victorious," the capital of Egypt, the most populous city of Africa, and the second city of the Mohammedan world. Throughout the entire distance of one hundred and twentyfive miles the land was level, black, and productive, broken only by canals, and divided into fields by ditches. Prof. Howard tells us that Cairo was formerly an exceedingly filthy and ill-governed city, but now, with its three hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, it ranks with the best governed capitals of the world. 2. We stop at the "Grand New Hotel," which fronts on a large square filled with trees, with kiosks for music and other entertainments. It is the 25th day of October. Dr. Edson says it never snows here, but dew is abundant. It is, indeed, the land of the sun, and the skies are as those of Italy. But why is it that the atmosphere is so pure, and the air so balmy? Dr. Edson says, it is because the great sandy deserts, on both sides of the Nile, drinking up, as they do, every particle of moisture, and all the miasm that comes from the decaying vegetation of the river, send back into the city the very air of Paradise. No wonder, then, that travellers flock here, in so great numbers, from all parts of Europe and America. 3. In this great city the usual mode of conveyance is by donkeys. Horses are rarely employed, and only a few of the streets are of sufficient width for carriages. We made up quite a caravan; and, on some forty little donkeys, our whole party visited the American Mission School here. This school has won the favor of the government,-has splendid buildings, and some five hundred children under its care. After our return to the hotel Prof. Howard related to us a romantic incident that occurred here a few years ago. The following is the story-and the Professor says it is true, in every particular : IV.—At Cairo.—A Story of the Mission School. 1. A few years ago a young Indian prince of the Hindoo race, who had been brought up as a Christian, and whose country had been annexed to the British dominions, was living in England with his aged mother. His revenues amounted to about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, so that he was able to live in great style and splendor. 2. His mother dying, he was on his way to India with her body, to deposit it in the tomb of her ancestors, in accordance with her dying request, when, passing through Cairo, he paid a visit to the American Mission School. There he was struck with the face of a young pupil in the girls' department, and, after due inquiry, he proposed to the missionaries to take the young girl as his wife. 3. Having gained their consent, he gained the consent of the young lady, also, and on his return from India they were married, and he took her with him to England, where they now reside. 4. The choice of a wife proved a most happy one, as the modest young pupil of Cairo, with the natural grace of her race, for she is partly of Arab descent,-introduced into his English home the culture and refinement acquired in a course of careful training. Nor does the husband forget what he owes to those who watched over her in her childhood: every year he sends five thousand dollars to the school, in grateful acknowledgment of the best possible gift it could make to him,—that of a noble Christian wife. 5. And now I have something to say about another school here. One day Henry Allen and I accompanied Prof. Howard on a visit to the great Mohammedan University of El-Azra, which is attached to one of the great mosques of the city. We saw there "some thousands" of students! (Prof. Howard said there were "two acres of turbans"!) and they were assembled in a vast enclosure, with no floor but a pavement, and over it a roof supported by four hundred columns, and at the foot of every column a teacher surrounded by pupils. As we entered, there arose a hum of thousands of voices reciting the Koran, the Mohammedan Bible. 6. "And this University," says the Professor, "is nine hundred years old; and, as in the days of the Arabian conquest, it still sends forth its missionaries throughout Asia, and even into the interior of Africa, to convert the heathen to the religion of the Koran." V.-The Pyramids,—and the "Battle of the Pyramids.” 1. Of course we went out to see the Pyramids, about seven miles south-west of the city, and on the western side of the Nile. The loftiest, called the Pyramid of Cheops, which all of our party ascended, is now four hundred and fifty feet high, but was, formerly, four hundred and eighty feet-being higher than St. Peter's at Rome. Its base covers thirteen acres, and the total weight of the stone contained in it, Dr. Edson says, was more than six million tons! 2. This is all the description I shall give you of these wonderful structures, whose origin is buried in some vastly remote, but unknown, age; "for they were already old when Moses led his people up out of Egypt." I carried away with me, for the Lake-View Museum, a specimen of the limestone rock of which they are built. 3. But what interested me most about the Pyramids, was -something that may seem to you to have very little connection with them. It was Prof. Howard's account of the great battle that was fought in the sandy plain near them, on the 21st of July, 1798, between the army of Napoleon on the one hand, during his invasion of Egypt, and the Egyptian forces on the other, the latter including eight thousand magnificently dressed and splendidly mounted Mamelukes,—the cavalry of the Desert, as they were called, the finest horsemen in the world. This battle occurred just eleven days before the great naval battle of the Nile. 4. As we gathered around the Professor, on the lofty summit of the Pyramid, where we could look away, eastward, far beyond the Nile, on the one hand, and to the Libyan hills on the other, he pointed out to us the positions of the contending hosts on the plain below. He also read to us a short but vivid description of the battle, which he had compiled from various sources. Here is what the historian Alison says of the advance of the French army against the brilliant array that had been drawn up to oppose the further progress of the invading hosts : 5. "The sight of the Pyramids, and the anxious nature of the moment, inspired Napoleon with even more than his usual ardor: the sun glittered on those immense masses, which seemed to rise in height every step the soldiers advanced, and the army, sharing his enthusiasm, gazed, as they marched, on those everlasting monuments. Remember,' said he, that from the summit of those Pyramids forty centuries contemplate your actions.' 6. The Professor explained to us how Napoleon advanced to the attack, throwing his army into hollow squares six feet deep, the artillery at the angles, and the generals and baggage in the centre; how seven thousand Arab horsemen, at full gallop, and rending the air with their cries, amid the glitter of spears and scimitars threw themselves, with the most reckless bravery, upon the French columns, and rode around them and among them, seeking to break their serried lines. 7. But while the bristling bayonets, against which they dashed their horses in vain, hurled them back, the rapid fire of musketry and grape from the cannon overwhelmed them, and piled the ground with the dead and the dying. It is sufficient to say, further, that the brave Egyptian army was routed with great slaughter; thousands, driven into the Nile, perished there; while the intrenched Egyptian camp, with all its artillery, stores, and baggage, fell into the hands of the victors. 8. "Such was the 'Battle of the Pyramids,'" said the Professor, as he concluded his description;-and now, when I think of it, I shall have in my mind a picture of moving columns, smoke, and carnage, while I, in fancy, shall look down upon the scene from the lofty summit of the Great Pyramid itself. VI.-Up the Nile.-The Ruins of Thebes. 1. But I must hurry on with my letter, for I have much to tell you yet, about this wonderful land. We made a long stay in Cairo; and it was not until the 2d of January that we started for the ruins of Thebes, four hundred and fifty miles distant, up the river,-a city of which Homer spoke, says Prof. Howard, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, as "The world's great empress on the Egyptian plain, |