liberally furnished from his exhaustless stores, give endless battle to any foe.

He was a diamond edition of the Turkish army. It were unfair to suppose that he had not adjusted his means to his conscious power, and what onslaughts and carnage were implied in his appearance ! What unfought Marathons and symbolical sieges of Troy were moving, in his awful accoutrements, around the court of Shepherd's Hotel ! Regarding the air of the movement, you would have sworn a union of Ajax and Achilles; looking in the eye, you would have owned Ulysses; but surveying the surprising whole, nothing less than impregnable Troy and all catapultic Greece had satisfied your fancy.

It was time to mount, and the farewells must be spoken.

You, Nera, have not forgotten that last Cairene afternoon, nor the sorrow that the charmed evenings of the Nile were not to be renewed upon the desert, nor the warm wishes, that, like gentle gales, should waft your barque to Greece. Neither have the Howadji lost from memory the figure that stood in the great sunny door, waving a slow hand of farewell, nor the eyes that looked, not without haziness and tearful mist, towards the uncertainty of the desert.

Addio, Nera!

With the words trembling upon my tongue, and half looking back and muttering last words, I laid my left hand carelessly upon the back of the recumbent camel to throw myself leisurely into the seat.

I had seen camels constantly for two months, and had condemned them as the slowest and most conceited of brutes. I had supposed an elephantine languor in every motion, and had anticipated a luxurious cradling over the desert in their rocking gait, for to the exoteric eye their movement is imaged by the lazy swell of summer

waves.

The saddle is a wooden frame, with a small upright stake, both in front and behind. Between these stakes and upon the frame, are laid the blankets, carpets, and other woollen conveniences for riding. Over all is thrown the brilliant Persian rug. The true method of mounting is to grasp the stakes in each hand, and to swing yourself rapidly and suddenly into the seat, while the camel driver-if you are luxurious and timid-holds his foot upon the bent fore-knee of the camel. Once in the seat you must cling closely, through the three convulsive spasms of rising and righting, two of which jerk you violently forward and one

backward.

This is a very simple mystery. But I was ignorant, and did not observe that no camel driver was at the head of my beast. In fact, I only observed that the great blue cotton umbrella, covered with white cloth, and the two water jugs dangling from the rear stake of my saddle, were a ludicrous combination of luxury and necessity, and ready to mount, I laid my hand as carelessly and leisurely upon the front stake as if my camel had been a cow.

But scarcely had my right foot left the earth on its meditative way to the other side of the saddle, than the camel snorted, threw back its head, and sprang up as nimbly as a colt.

I, meanwhile, was left dangling with the blue cotton umbrella, and the water jugs at the side, several feet from the ground, and made an abortive grasp at the rear stake. But I only clutched the luxuries, and down we fell, Howadji, pocket-pistols, umbrella, and water jugs, in a confused heap.

The good Commander arrived at the scene as soon as the arsenal permitted, and swore fiercely at the Arabs from the midst of his net-work of weapons. Then, very blandly, he instructed me in the mystery of camel-climbing, and in a few minutes we were on the way to Jerusalem.

CHAPTER III.

OUTSKIRTS.

WITH the first swing of the camel, Egypt and the Nile began to recede. With this shuttle the desert was to be woven into the web of my life. To share that moment's feeling, sympathetic reader, you must recall the change of horses at La Storta, the last post to Rome, and gild the sensation with oriental glory.

We paced through the outskirts of the city. The streets were narrow and dirty as we approached the gate, although they wound under beautiful lattices, and palms drooped over the roofs. Sore-eyed children played around the houses. Barbers were shaving men who kneeled, and rested their heads in the barber's lap. Flabby women, in draggling coarse veils, and scant filthy garments, loitered by, with trays of thin cakes upon their heads.

Through the grated windows of the Mosque we

saw the silent devotee steeped in the red light of the westering sun, and dreaming in his squalid rags, which the sun's golden finger touched into a gorgeous robe, of the Paradise where "the comely of countenance" should, even so, surfeit his lean soul with bliss.

For thus," says quaint old Burton of the Saracen, "he fats himself with future joys."

We rode superior to the scene, upon our lofty camels. They swayed gently along, and occasionally swung their heads and long necks awkwardly aside to peer through the lattices, and suffer their eyes to browse upon hidden beauty, as the "large, calm eyes" of the sea-snake feed upon the mermaid, in Tennyson's poem.

spell I had

the superb As we passed

The old silence and sadness whose constantly felt in Cairo, brooded over town, the holy city," to the last. out of the gate into the desert, no hope called after us.

The suburbs of "the mother of the world" are tombs. In the desert, death beleaguers the city, and you can well fancy that the melancholy genius of the people seeks to propitiate the awful enemy by these stately and solitary buildings, grouped beyond the walls in the sand. Even as Andromeda, the King's own child, was exposed to the common