EVENING ON THE CANAL. 23 ways foremost in the everlasting refrain of " haylee-sah ! " and "i/a salaam!'''' with which the Egyptian sailors row and tow and pole their boats against the current. Before we left the boat we had acquired a kind of affection for these three men, while the rais, with his grim face and croaking voice, grew more repulsive every day.

We spread a mat on the deck, lighted our lantern and sat down to supper, while a gentle north wind slowly carried our boat along through shadows of palms and clear spaces of moonlight. Ibrahim filled the shebooks, and for four hours we sat in the open air, which seemed to grow sweeter and purer with every breath we inhaled. We were a triad—the sacred number—and it would have been diflficult to find another triad so harmonious md yet differing so strongly in its parts. One was a Landwirtli from Saxe-Coburg, a man of forty-five, tall, yet portly in person, and accustomed to the most comfortable living and the best society in Germany. Another was a Smyrniote merchant, a young man of thirty, to whom all parts of Europe were familiar, who spoke eight languages, and who within four months had visited Ispahan and the Caucasus. Of the third it behooves me not to speak, save that he was from the New World, and that he differed entirely from his friends in stature, features, station in life, and every thing else but mutual goodfellowship. " Ah," said the German in the fulness of his heart, as we basked in the moonlight, '• what a heavenly air ! what beautiful palms ! and this wonderful repose in all Nature, which I never felt before !" " It is better than the gardens of Ispahan," added the Smyrniote. Nor did I deceive them when I said that for many months past I had known no mood of mind so peaceful and grateful.