510 JOURNET TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

exceedingly. He was walking one night on the road from Cairo to Shoobra, when he suddenly saw a donkey before him.

As he was somewhat fatigued, and the donkey did not appear to have an owner, he mounted, and was riding along very pleasantly, when he was startled by the fact that the animal was gradually increasing in size. In a few minutes it became nearly as large as a camel ; and he thereby knew that it was no donkey, but an afrite. At first he was in such terror that the hairs of his beard stood straight out from his face, but suddenly remembering that an afrite may be brought to reveal his true nature by wounding him with a sharp instrument, he cautiously drew his dagger and was about to plunge it into the creature's back. The donkey-fiend, however, kept a sharp watch iipon him with one of his eyes, which was turned backwards, and no sooner saw the dagger than he contracted to his original shape, shook off his rider and whisked away with a yell of infernal laughter, and the jeering exclamation : " Ha !

ha ! you want to ride, do you ? " We had scarcely left Esneh before a fresh gale arose, and kept us tossing about in the same spot all night. These blasts on the Nile cause a rise of waves which so shake the vessel that one sometimes feels a premonition of sea-sickness.

They whistle drearily through the ropes, like a gale on the open sea. The air at these times is filled with a gray haze, and the mountain chains on either hand have a dim, watery loom, like that of mountains along the sea-coast. For half a day I lay in sight of Esneh, but during the following night, as there was no wind, I could not sleep for the songs of the sailors. The sunrise touched the colonnade of Luxor. I slept beyond my usual time, and on going out of the cabin what