red and yellow rice were piled up in heaps, employs a great number of hands. Here, in 1829, the most fearful scenes are said to have taken place, when there was a famine in Egypt, an artificial famine, created by the Pasha's monopoly of grain; and the people, collecting in crowds around the public stores, beheld through the palisades of this same shoonah huge piles of corn spoiling in the open air, while they were perishing of hunger. It has been asserted, but I trust incorrectly, that government refused to sell the grain to the people until it was spoiled, and that it would not even permit them to purchase better corn elsewhere. This famine was equally felt throughout the country. At Cairo, the government first sold a kind of mixture half wheat and half barley; but for the wheat mouldy beans were afterwards substituted; and this continued for about three or four months, during which corn was contraband throughout Egypt. Some wheat was even imported, by private speculators, from Syria; a thing unheard of since the famine of Ismaïn Bey: but a heavy duty put a stop to this promised relief.* From the shoonah we

These stories, which are current in the country, have been collected and repeated in "Deux Mots sur l'Egypte, &c. par L. Bousquet Deschamps." Smyrna, 1832, p. 12. note. But the authority of this writer must be relied on with great caution, since he is a disappointed and angry adventurer. His English translator, whose manuscript was put into my hands at Cairo, corroborates, however, his testimony respecting the causes and horrors of this famine, and I have made use of his words in the text. Nevertheless, Mr. Harris of Alexandria, one of the first merchants in Egypt, a man of honour and veracity, and who was in the country during the whole continuance of the scarcity, authorises me most positively to contradict, in his name,

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returned to our inn, where our party was shortly afterwards joined by the Reverend Vere Monro, who had just arrived across the desert. We had been introduced to each other at Alexandria: he was now the bearer of a letter to me from our excellent Consulgeneral, Mr. Barker; and he became from this moment the constant companion of my travels, which were rendered at once more profitable and agreeable by his society.

Saturday, Nov. 24. Fouah.

XL. We left Rosetta about eight o'clock in the morning, and, shortly afterwards, struck off into the desert, which, immediately south of the mosque of Abou-Mandoor, comes down close to the water's edge. Very heavy rain having fallen during the two preceding nights, the blades of a fine tender grass were, this morning, quite thick among the loose sands, giving their wavy surface an appearance of verdure; which convinces me that water only is wanting to render even the desert fertile. Here and there several small groves of date palms enlivened the waste, which,

the reports of persons having perished of starvation on this occasion at Rosetta, or elsewhere. It should also be remarked that the Pasha, whose monopoly is said to have caused the famine, never exported, while it lasted, a single ardeb of grain, except to Candia, a part of his own dominions; and that, notwithstanding the assertion of the writer above cited, wheat was sometimes imported from Syria for the use of the people, though the importation of flour from Europe was not generally permitted. In some instances, however, the Pasha was induced, by the representations of Boghos Iousouff, to allow small quantities of flour to be brought from Malta, for the use of Europeans, to whom the bread made of beans and mouldy flour was intolerable.

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ROUTE THROUGH THE DESERT.

ascending and descending in strongly marked undulations, wore a very striking aspect. In a short time, diverging a little to the left, we come down to the bank of the river, directly opposite the great bend which it here makes towards the east, and, on turning round, enjoyed a noble prospect of the convent of Abou-Mandoor, with its elegant dome and minaret, embosomed in palm trees; and, beyond this, the city and orange groves of Rosetta, beautified by distance. The Nile is here exceedingly deep; its banks are perpendicular; and, notwithstanding the decrease of the inundation, the water was not many feet below the level of the land. Our pathway, which ran close along the edge of the stream, was, in many places, barely wide enough to allow of the passing of a single beast between the sand hills and the water, and so unstable and slippery, that the smallest degree of unsteadiness would inevitably have precipitated us into the Nile. However, one only of our whole party alighted, though in all such cases it would seem to be the wiser way to trust to one's own feet.

XLI. For some hours our road still continued to lead through the desert, or over those fields, once fertile, which its perpetual encroachments have snatched from cultivation; and in the midst of this sterile tract we passed by a lofty ancient tower, in the Saracenic style, standing in the sand, close to the deserted mosque or convent of Mesa. The character of the country now changed. From a bare waste expanse, whose surface is the perpetual play

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thing of the winds, we entered upon a marsh, beautified, in many parts, by groves of date trees, and by various kinds of shrubs, rushes, reeds, and other aquatic plants. Scattered here and there among these woods and copses were numerous sheets of clear water, which beautifully reflected the passing clouds, and on whose surface were seen, on all sides, snipes, curlews, wild ducks, with large flights of the white ibis, or paddy-bird, moving hither and thither, or settling on the branches of the trees, like immense snow-drops. The appearance of these diminutive lakes, running in various shapes among low sandy shores, their surface dotted with small bosky islands, or with sand-banks covered with a thick efflorescence of salt, as white as snow, was exceedingly picturesque. Here a part of my companions, who were sportsmen, found abundance of game.

XLII. At length, after a ride of several hours, we arrived at Tifeny, a village situated on both banks of the Nile, where we were to cross over into the Delta. There being no caravanserai at this place, we halted by a sheïkh's tomb, on the banks of the river, where our beasts were unladen. Dates, butter, and excellent buffalo's milk, with bread, which we had brought from Alexandria, constituted our midday meal, which we ate sitting in the sun, while the muezzin, from the minaret of a neighbouring mosque, was summoning the faithful to the Sallah il Dohr, or "noon prayer." On the margin of the river various operations, connected with the domestic eco

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IMMODEST COSTUME.

nomy of the Arabs, were, at the same time, going on. There was a man cutting up, upon the mud, a buffalo, which he had just killed, while the dogs were lapping the blood. Several women were employed in turning the entrails inside out, and others in hacking and hewing the reeking limbs for immediate consumption. A little below there was a party of washerwomen. While I was engaged in looking at these different groups, a pretty young female, bareheaded and barefoot, came tripping across the green, to draw water from the river. The immodest costume, which Euripides objects to the Spartan women, was decent compared with that of this young Arab matron; for the opening in the chemise, the only garment which she wore, not only exposed to view the whole of the bosom, but the greater part likewise of the abdomen : but at this I soon ceased to be surprised; for the fair sex, in Egypt, provided they can hide their faces,and it is those of the higher order only who attempt to do this, care not what other part of their person they exhibit; observing, that it is by the features alone that one individual is distinguished from another, all women being, in other respects, pretty nearly alike. Having filled her jar, she twisted a wisp of straw into a ring, and placed it on her head to hold the vessel, which an Arab, apparently a neighbour, lifted up for her.

XLIII. In crossing the ferry, our party occupied three boats, one with a sail, which drew the second after it. The third was rowed across. As soon as we