ATFEH. 26 and myriads of swallows circled and twittered over our heads in the cloudless air. The calm, contemplative state produced by the coffee and pipes which Ibrahim brought us, lasted the whole afternoon, and the villages, the cane-fields, the Moslem oratories, the wide level of the Delta and the distant mounds of forgotten cities, passed before our eyes like the pictures of a dream. Only one of these pictures marred the serenity of our minds. It was an Arab burying-ground, on the banks of the Canal—a. collection of heaps of mud, baked in the sun.

At the head and foot of one of the most recent, sat two women—paid mourners—who howled and sobbed, in long, piteous, despairing cries, which were most painful to hear. I should never have imagined that any thing but the keenest grief could teach such heart-breaking sounds.

When I climbed the bank at sunset, for a walk, the minarets of Atfeh, on the Nile, were visible. Two rows of acacias, planted along the Canal, formed a pleasant arcade, through which we sailed, to the muddy excrescences of the town. The locks were closed for the night, and we were obliged to halt, which gave us an opportunity of witnessing an Arabic marriage procession. The noise of two wooden drums and a sort of fife announced the approach of the bride, who, attended by her relatives, came down the bank from the mud-ovens above. She was closely veiled, but the Arabs crowded around to get a peep at her face. No sooner had the three Franks approached, than she was doubly guarded and hurried off to the house of her intended husband. Some time afterwards I ascended the bank to have a nearer view of the miserable hovels, but was received with such outcries and menacing gestures, that I made a slow and dignified retreat. We visited, however, the house of the 2