56 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRI0 4.

notonous bass howlings so filled our ears that we could not choose but listen, and, in spite of our fatigue, sleep was impossible. After performing for several hours, they gradually ceased, through sheer exhaustion, though there was one tough old dervish, who continued to gasp out, Allah! Allah / with such a spasmodic energy, that I suspected it was produced by the involuntary action of his larynx, and that he could not have stopped, even had he been so minded.

When we threw open the latticed blinds of our cabin, before sunrise, the next morning, the extraordinary purity of the air gave rise to an amusing optical delusion on the part of my friend. "See that wall!" said he, pointing to a space between two white houses ; " what a brilliant color it is painted, and how tKose palms and these white houses are relieved against it 1 " He was obliged to look twice before he perceived that what he had taken for a wall close at hand, was really the sky, and rested upon a far-off horizon. Our donkeys were in readiness on the bank, and I bestrode the same faithful little gray who had for three days carried me through the bazaars of Cairo. We left orders for the rais to go on to Bedracheyn a village near the supposed site of Memphis, and taking Achmet with us, rode off gayly among the mud hovels and under the date-trees of Gizeh, on our way to the Pyramids. Near the extremity of the village, we entered one of the large chicken-hatching establishments for which the place is famed, but found it empty. We disturbed a numerous family of Fellahs, couched together on the clay floor, crept on our hands and knees through two small holes and inspected sundry ovens covered with a layer of chaff, and redolent of a mild, moist heat and a feathery smell. The owner informed us that foi