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and his rounded hump spread with heavy carpets, he presents a moving throne for a Caliph or a Sultan, in his desert progress, of dignity unsurpassed. The rider sits supreme above the animal, and over the earth, and the long languid movement harmonizes with the magnificent monotony of the scene.

When the sun rose, our caravan was quietly making its two and a half miles an hour. It advanced not more rapidly than a small boy's walking, for at the head of the train, with the halter of the forward camel drawn over his shoulder, marched the young Hamed, an Arab boy of ten years, whose father was the Shekh and presiding genius of the caravan, and whose white-headed grandfather, ambling by our sides upon a little donkey which he quite enveloped and concealed in his flowing garments, was our uninvited guest. There were two or three other men as assistants, all friends or relatives of the Shekh, and we went forward, a quiet family party, in the fresh March morning.

We had encamped upon the verge of the desert, and leaving the green land as we started, our route now lay parallel with the line of green, and not more than a quarter of a mile away from it. Yet that line was distinct as the shore from the sea, and we renewed upon the desert the vision of the Nile landscape.

Our western horizon was an endless forest of palms, with which mingled occasional minarets. The east was a hard level line of monotonous gray. My eyes clung to the greenness and beauty of the river, although in the clear daylight, the awfulness of the desert was gracious

and beautiful also. Under our feet, and as far eastward as we could see, the ground was like a beach of firm gravel. Never was the desert, even when we were in it fairly and far, so much desert to the imagination as near Cairo, never so glaringly appalling as the yellow Libyan and Arabian wastes that girdled the greenness of the Nile.

When we went, during the Cairo days, to the petrified forest, a few miles from the city in the wilderness, I dreaded the desert, as in the languid and voluptuous embrace of Como, I dreaded the snowy Switzerland that rose severe from its northern extremity. Standing among the petrifactions, they were puerile and tame. I only saw and felt the desert, and no more heeded the sight we came to see than a General meditating the various chances of the impending battle, heeds the banquet at which he sits.

You have stood upon the sea-shore before you sailed, and imagination with an eye more glittering than the ancient mariners, fascinated hope and fear with tales more wonderful than his. Friends and foes were daily going to sea, and the ocean was but a thoroughfare between the continents. The horizon was white with sails that canopied men, smoking, and sea-sick, and gaming, and tortured with ennui, and longing for land. The sea was trite. Some mercantile friends even went up the side of the ship, with a hand-bag and an umbrella, to go to England or France, as you had stepped upon a Hudson steamer for an evening at West Point.

But for all that,

before you sailed, the sea was awful: mysterious and

strange as death, although friends die daily, and Sinbad saw nothing which you might not see, Columbus sought no Cathay that you might not reach.

More mysterious, if possible, than the ocean to the untravelled, is the desert before you mount El Shiraz and Mac Whirter. It is a sea of sand to the fancy, a waste of blowing, soft, yellow, glaring sand, utterly soulconsuming, without trees, without water, whereon the bones of men and camels bleach together, and the whir ring sand, inexorable as the sea, hides as surely its own devastations. Such in fierce midsummer is the arid

heart of Sahara.

But the Arabian desert is a more comely monster, though a monster still. For the death of the desert is more awful than the life of the sea, as silence is more terrible than sound. And when experience takes the tale from imagination, not less glittering, although different, is its eye, not less fascinating the closes of its strain, and experience, like the mariner, leaves you a sadder and a wiser man.

VI.

The Desert Blossoms.

THE caravan plodded on. The morning and the silence deepened. The stillness was not tranquillizing, but exciting. My restless eyes roved around the horizon, and presently discovered another train behind us. It advanced more rapidly than our own, and, at length, a grave old man was visible, with a venerable beard and a cheerful countenance, riding upon a white mare. Immediately behind him two huge palanquins rolled from side to side on the backs of camels.

Was it not plain to see that the lithe figure leaning from the first palanquin to survey the strangers was the beautiful daughter of the grave old man, and that her unveiled face confirmed the suspicion of his dark turban, (for Christians may wear no other,) that this was no Muslim, but an Armenian caravan?

Did not the Howadjis' eyes with warm Christian sympathy contemplate this sister in the faith, marking the large, luminous eyes, the lustrous fulness of dark hair, and the fair oriental complexion of the Armenian ?

Could they fail to note the maidenly condescension to

the mysteries of the Muslim toilette in the finger-nails delicately tipped with henna, or could they cynically accuse the treachery of silken sleeves that lightly falling away revealed gorgeous bracelets embracing rosy arms?

The desert suddenly blossomed like the rose. It was an Armenian merchant of Cairo, making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holy week. He ambled toward the Commander, who, smoking his chibouque, looked graciously down upon him from the heights of Pomegranate, and after a prolonged salaam inquired into our history.

"Two opulent strangers," retorted the Commander in the full glory of the Golden Sleeve; "two great American Moguls going to gladden Jerusalem with their presence."

"Täib, täib kateir (good, very good)," gravely replied the Armenian, inclining toward El Shiraz and MacWhirter. "Would it be pleasant to journey together?"

"I will consult the Moguls," said the lofty Commander, and he turned to converse with us.

"Do any of them speak English?" anxiously inquired the Pacha, and the Commander repeated the inquiry to the old man.

"Ah! kooltooluk, (Oh Heavens), no," replied the venerable beard; "but Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, a little Persian and Turkish, and madame, the mother of the beautiful daughter, imperfect Italian."

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"Well, I don't speak Italian," said the Pacha, "so they may come along."

We moved on. Presently seeing madame, the mother of the beautiful daughter, looking out of the palanquin,

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