16 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

the finest in Alexandria, the most superb in all the Orient,

but it did not at all accord with our ideas of Eastern luxury.

Moreover, the bath-keeper was his intimate friend, and would bathe us as no Christians were ever bathed before. One fact

Ibrahim kept to himself, which was, that his intimate friend

and he shared the spoils of our inexperience. "We were con-

ducted to a one-story building, of very unprepossessing exte-

rior. As we entered the low, vaulted entrance, my ears were

saluted with a dolorous, groaning sound, which I at first con-

jectured to proceed from the persons undergoing the opera-

tion, but which I afterward ascertained was made by a wheel

turned by a buffalo, employed in raising water from the well.

In a sort of basement" hall, smelling of soap-suds, and with a large tank of dirty water in the centre, we were received by

the bath-keeper, who showed us into a room containing three low divans with pillows. Here we disrobed, and Ibrahim,

who had procured a quantity of napkins, enveloped our heads

in turbans and swathed our loins in a simple Adamite gar-

ment. Heavy wooden clogs were attached to our feet, and an

animated bronze statue led the way through gloomy passages, sometimes hot and steamy, sometimes cold and soapy, and

redolent of any thing but the spicy odors of Araby the Blest,

to a small vaulted chamber, lighted by a few apertures in the

ceiling. The moist heat was almost suffocating ; hot water

flowed over the stone floor, and the stone benches we sat upon

were somewhat cooler than kitchen stoves. The bronze indi-

vidual left us, and very soon, sweating at every pore, we began to think of the three Hebrews in the furnace. Our comfort

was not increased by the groaning sound which we still heard,

and by seeing, through a hole in the door, five or six naked