payment on our part were proved, the commodore gave his approbation to this modification of a robbery.'

The inhabitants of Sukkót seemed glad that the pacha had taken the country into his own hands; for his sovereignty was a protection to them, both against the depredations of the Arabs, and against the rapacity of their own petty chieftains, who had been in the habit of leaving their subjects just enough to tempt the rovers of the desert. They gave our travellers, for the most part, a kindly reception. Their admiration was excited by their arms more than by any thing else. 'Now, at last,' exclaimed one of their sheiks at the sight of a sword-stick, 'now at last we begin to see the world.' The face of the country was superior to that of the Batn el Hadjar. The Nile was less interrupted by rocks; the plain had assumed a wider extent; the acacias were finer than even in Egypt; but the many ruined houses, which were to be seen, attested too surely that the population was in an unprosperous state.

The travellers entered Dar Mahass on the 18th, and spent three days in traversing it. The general aspect of this district was similar to that of Sukkót; if there was any difference, it was on the side of improvement. The soil was better cultivated; matted work was becoming plentiful; and great numbers were seen employed in weaving. Shortly before quitting Dar Mahass, our travellers enjoyed the contemplation of the most striking spot that Nubian scenery has to boast of. It is known by the name of 'the Pass of the Water's Mouth.' Near the entrance, on the right, two immense stones, regular as if art had hewn and placed them there, stand detached in solitary grandeur. Beyond them the pass opens with extraordinary sublimity: and the traveller finds himself amid a wilderness of rocks, that tower aloft like so many natural columns. In the presence of these enormous masses, irre gularly scattered about in solitude, 'we felt ourselves,' says Mr. W., ' in a holy place, and seemed walking amid the columns of a mighty temple, erected by the divinity in his own honor, and for his own worship.' 'There is nothing at Assouan, Wady Halfa, or in the Batn el Hadjar, at all comparable to the 'Pass of the Water's Mouth,' either in grandeur or in variety of scenery: the immense masses of rock piled up together, the open plains scattered over with fragments, the entire want of all vegetation, and yet the traces of so many animals; the occasional view of the distant palms straggling by the river side, and of the boundless desert beyond it, with the knowledge that man has no power here to change the face of nature, which ever has been, and ever must be what it is; these circumstances unite to give this place an interest possessed by no other that I ever saw, and to us, perhaps, heightened by the reflection, that we were the first Englishmen who had ever seen it, as we might possibly be the last.'

On the morning of the 22d of November, they entered Dóngola. Five palms standing by the river side, and a large solitary hill, Mount Arambo by name, four miles distant from the Nile, mark the frontier. About a mile beyond it, thev ob

served two hieroglyphical inscriptions on a large granite rock, called by the natives the Golden Stone. One of them faces the north-west, and is two feet four inches broad, and three feet high. A man, with his hair in the fashion of the Briareus of the Egyptian temple, is in the act of making an offering; and, in the lower corner on the left, are two prisoners, back to back, with their arms chained together." The whole is encompassed and diversified with hieroglyphics. The other faces the south-west, and consists of eighteen lines of hieroglyphics, with the ball and serpent at the top; but it is so defaced that no copy of it could be made. On the same day they saw much cotton growing in the neighbourhood of a place called Askán, and passed what we certainly did not expect to find in Dóngola-a cotton-mill.

On the following day, their route lay at first through a barren plain, the uniformity of which was broken only by a few acacias, and many ruined houses and tombs: but crossing a high mound, which was between them and the river, they suddenly found themselves in a garden luxuriant beyond imagination, where the air breathed fragrance, and the groves were filled with melody. Dismissing here their guides, and beasts of burden, they were ferried over into the island of Argo. The scenery of the island is very beautiful; consisting of meadows, where cows and goats feed without any keeper, intermixed with small open cultivated fields, all shut in by sycamore and aromatic groves. It is likewise interesting to the antiquary, by the ruins of ancient buildings and fragments of ancient statues which it contains. Our countrymen traversed it nearly from north to south, and arrived at the ferry for crossing to the western bank of the Nile, elevated by the hope that a few hours would bring them to New Dongola, where abdin Casheff would lend them every assistance for the further prosecution of their journey. From the ferryman, however, they learned that Abdin Casheff had advanced to join the army; intelligence which could not be very acceptable to travellers, who, counting upon his protection, were without camels, and almost without money. With the assistance of asses, they arrived on the 25th at New Dongola, which we have already mentioned as having been the capital of the Mamelukes, and greatly improved by then. It is a large and very neat mud town, ornamented with courts and squares, and beautifully situated in the finest country of the Nile. It lies in 19° N. lat. The river is here about half a mile broad.

As no beasts of burden could be procured, to proceed by land was impossible. In this dilemma, the travellers applied to the Turkish Aga, to grant them a passage in one of sixteen boats, which were about to sail with supplies for the army. Their request was instantly granted: and, on the morning of the 26th, they commenced their voyage up the river. This mode of travelling did not allow them any opportunity of examining the country, but it gave them some illustrations of Turkish discipline and Turkish navigation. The former is somewhat better, the latter much worse, than we had imagined. The boats could not move unless the wind was directly favorable:

and they scarcely dreamt of the possibility of crossing the river with a side breeze. So much for their navigation. As to their discipline, all plundering was prohibited, and the troops were not permitted to oppress the natives. One morning Mr. Waddington found the commodore in great wrath, and beating all the soldiers who came within his reach, because during the night some of thein had plucked the ears of the dhourra. This severity of discipline, however, was neither maintained uniformly, nor was it universal in its operation. Some restraint was imposed upon the troops, only that the superior officers might have a more complete monopoly of rapine; and, though the soldiers might not steal a few ears of corn, they were at liberty to seize the sheep of the inhabitants by force, and pay for them in base money, which had neither currency nor value in the country. Accordingly the neighbourhood of the fleet seems to have been dreaded by the natives. The want of a favorable wind forced the commodore to make a halt near the town of Amboocote, and, in the course of the ensuing night, the inhabitants removed with their property into the desert. During this delay our countrymen received a visit of an uncommon description. It was from some Cubbabish Arabs, who, in the character of strolling preachers, went about the villages, teaching and explaining the Koran, in churches set apart for that purpose. They said that nearly all their tribe could read and write; so that, if reading and writing are to be taken as the criteria of education, the county of Middlesex, we are afraid, must yield the palm to a horde of Nubian Arabs. They supposed that Mr. Waddington was invested with authority to assess the new impositions upon the country (an error arising probably from the frequent use he made of his pencil in noting the names of places and the incidents of his journey), and they came to ascertain the rate and manner in which they were to be taxed for the future, and to entreat him not to make their burdens too heavy.

On the 7th of December the fleet resumed its progress, and, leaving Dongola, entered Dar Sheygy'a. Our travellers were now in the theatre of the war, and they found that the arms of the Turks had been hitherto successful. Ismael pacha, having upon his approach to the frontier summoned the Sheygy'a to submit, was answered by an offer to pay tribute. He next required them to prove their sincerity by sending him their arms and their horses, but received the same reply. And when he renewed his demand, Either go on your business, or come and attack us,' was the laconic answer made to it. In the first skirmish the Sheygy'a were the assailants, and were repulsed. In the second they were again unsuccessful, and the virgin daughter of one of their chiefs was made prisoner. The pacha sent her back uninjured and loaded with presents and her father showed his gratitude to his generous enemy by refusing to take any further share in the war. To diffuse astonishment and terror among them, Ismael caused a brilliant display of fire-works to be made in view of their encampment. What!' said they, upon beholding this exhibition, is he come to make war

upon heaven too.' They were told by some of the Arabian followers of the pacha, that, unless they submitted, he would drive them to Sennaar; they replied, "He may drive us to the gates of the world, but we will not submit.' An engagement, of more importance than any which had preceded it, took place shortly after Mr. Waddington's arrival in the camp. "Their first attack was irresistible; the Bedouins were driven back, and Abdin Casheff advanced from the opposite angle of the square to support them; while he was engaged, the Bedouins rallied in his rear, he returned to his post, and they charged again. The Moggrebbyns had been similarly routed and rallied. The Sheygy'a, though suffering very severely, repeated their attacks, and three times was Abdin Casheff seen to charge in person, and throw himself into the middle of the enemy; he shot several of them with his own hand, and, having disarmed one, he drove his own lance quite through his bedy. The pacha was giving, in other parts, similar proofs of courage, the only one he could now give of generalship, and the pistol of his flighness is said to have been particularly destructive; he caught the gaiety of his enemies, and rode among them with a laugh. At last, the Sheygy's, finding that their magic had not been able to stop the course of Turkish halls, and that the charms of the enemy were stronger than their own, said, 'that God had declared against them, and took to flight. They had placed great dependence on those charms to which their necromancers had given, for this occasion, peculiar power and efficacy; and their first act after the battle was to put to death the whole race that had thus imposed on their credulity.

Their cavalry, being much better mounted than their adversaries, in general escaped, but a great part of the infantry was massacred. It is, however, universally acknowledged that the pacha exerted himself to save the flying enemy, and succeeded in preserving some, who were of the infantry, and chiefly Nubians: inhabitants of that part of Dongola which was tributary to the Sheygy'a, and attached to their army by force, or habit, or inclination; for these Arabs were not disliked by their subjects. The pacha made presents to his prisoners, and clothed them, and sent them back to the Sheygy'a with an insulting message, not to send Berabéres against them, but to come themselves; to which they answered, as when yet unwounded, Either go on your business, or come and attack us.' He had not yet passed their mountain barrier, where they had been in the habit of routing their invaders.

'It is a singular, though very certain, fact, that the pacha had not one man killed in this action, and only one officer and sixteen men wounded, and these, with scarcely any exception in the back-the natural consequence of their manner of fighting; they discharge all their firearms, and then retire into the rear to re-load, while the second and succeeding ranks are firing; when loaded, they advance again, and therefore, after the first discharge, the whole is a scene of confusion. One Bedouin received seven lance wounds, not one of which was honorable, and

the river, the mountains, and the trees, we cut rather short, and came somewhat hastily to the point. We are come according to the commands of your highness, supposing that your highness has something particular to communicate.' I feel honored by your visit to the army, and should be pleased to have your company as far as Sennaar, but the dangers and difficulties and privations will be so great, that I advise you to return.' We wish respectfully to be informed, whether your highness's advice amounts to a coinmand?' It is for your own good, and the love I have for England. We are to understand, then, that your highness obliges us to return?' "It is solely with a view to your own good that I give this order. We are sorry that your highness has thought proper to prevent the intentions of English gentlemen. We submit to your highness's order.' My only motive is a consideration of your own safety; besides which, the firman given you by my father extends no farther than Wady Halfa.' We do not dispute your highness's right to act, but rather thank your highness that we have been allowed to come thus far, and perhaps we should not have thought of advancing farther, had not the Protomedico communicated to us, from your highness, an invitation to accompany the army as far as Sennaar.' I should have great pleasure, were it not that I fear for your safety.' Well, we submit; we have only to beg your highness to permit us to advance as far as the cataract and the islands near it, and then to return by water.' The danger is not so much in advancing as for your return, as the people in our rear are even now unquiet, and, when the army moves on, will probably break into insurrection; and from above I shall not be able to send a guard with you; nor will it be safe for you to go by water. As visitors to my army, I am responsible to my father, and to the English nation, for your safety.' In case of our writing to Cairo to mention the offers of protection made by your highness, may we be allowed these favors, by taking all responsibility on ourselves?' After some hesitation, If you will write a letter to such effect, and give it to me, I will send it to my father and the English consul, and you are then free to advance or return, as you like.' And after a few more words, in which he promised us a boat to go down in, the matter was ended greatly to our satisfaction. 'He attempted, during the latter part of the conversation, which is here much abridged, to work alternately on our vanity and our fears; on the former, by a number of unmeaning compliments to ourselves and to the English nation; and on the latter, by accounts of robberies committed every night in the very rear of his army, and the general disturbed state of the country; and then he motioned away the Mamelukes and Janissaries, who were standing by, as if he were making us an important communication, that would spread a panic in his army if generally known. The courtier from Cairo gave us from time to time some looks of mixed anger and surprise, on observing perhaps a freedom in our words or manner that was not usual towards a Turkish prince. The pacha ended by telling us, hat he would defer the departure of the convoy

till to-morrow evening, to give us more time for reflection, and we parted apparently good friends.' (p. 149-151). They immediately wrote a ecter, taking upon themselves exclusively, in the strongest language they could use, all responsi bility for their own safety.

But the pacha, though he expressed himself perfectly satisfied with it, begged them to reconsider the subject: and Abdin Casheff, having sent for them, entered into many details to prove, that their advance would be dangerous, and their return, after a certain time, impossible. They now, therefore, saw that the pacha was determined they should go no further. The promise of a boat to convey them down was retracted, and it was fixed, that they should return with a convoy along the left bank of the Nile. The escort, however, was placed completely at their disposal, and every necessary for the journey liberally supplied. A respite of two days was also allowed them, that they might finish their plans and descriptions of the antiquities in the neighbourhood.

These two days our travellers assiduously devoted to the important ruins a little to the north of Merawe, at the foot of the mountain Djebel el Berkel, near the site, as Mr. Waddington supposes, of the ancient Napata. They consist of temples and pyramids. Of the seven or eight stone buildings and excavations in the rock, which Mr. Waddington supposes to have been temples, there is one which far exceeds all the rest. Including the thickness of the walls, it is 450 feet long, and 159 wide: its entrance faces the Nile, and, going in, you pass successively through five chambers, the exterior being larger than the interior, and all of them having been once ornamented with columns. To the left of the innermost chamber but one, is a sixth apartment; and in each of these two is a black granite pedestal, beautifully sculptured, on which stood, most probably, the statue of the god to whom the temple was dedicated, or of the king by whom it was erected. Hieroglyphics were still visible on the ruined walls. From having observed a sculptured stone among the mortar, in the middle of the thick outer wall, Mr. Waddington inferred that the stones were taken from some more ancient edifice; and the irregularity of the foundatious, together with the positions of several of the columns, inclined him to believe that this building had, when erected, included within it some chambers of one still older. The most perfect of these temples is one which, according to Mr. Waddington, was dedicated to Bacchus; it is about 100 feet in length, and is ornamented with figures of nearly all the gods of Egypt. The fol lowing is the description of the edifice, which, in his opinion, surpasses all the rest in antiquity:

'Five of its six chambers are cut in the rock, and the other, the first, which is thirty-six feet square, stands on an artificial stone foundation, by which it is elevated to the height of the rock in which the others are excavated. The wall separating the second chamber from the first is solid, but of no great thickness; the chamber measures twenty feet five inches by twenty-one feet six inches, and contains the remains of four round pillars, whose diameter is two feet five

inches. The third chamber is only ten feet wine inches in length, and of nearly the same width as the second. The fourth, or adytum, is twelve feet four inches long, and ten feet eight inches wide. Of the two smaller ones, on each side of it, the one is four feet three inches in width, and the other only three feet nine inches: at the end of each is a stone bench, two feet in height, where statues may formerly have been erected. The height of the solid roof, which is now in most places fallen in, was eleven feet seven inches. On the back wall of the room, on the right of the adytum, appear two defaced figures of Jupiter Ammon, and the young divinity whom I have called Horus. There are vestiges of hieroglyphics in all the chambers. Above the rock, which forms the back wall of the adytum, are six or eight layers of stones, of different sizes, and of the rudest architecture, erected possibly as a defence against fragments which might roll down upon the temple from the mountain behind. The walls of the cells have in two or three places been repaired, and faced with stone, on which are hieroglyphics. There are some specimens of the same kind of patchwork on the front of the rock, in which the temple of Gyrshe, in Nubia, is excavated. The elevated chamber in front may have been the addition of a later age; as in the preceding temple the statue of Bacchus, and the capital or ornament on its head, are better executed and finished than the figures sculptured on the walls within. From the simplicity of the masonry, from the rudeness and decay of the remaining sculptures, and from the raggedness and decomposition of the walls, though they had been sheltered probably for ages, by the solid rock, from the sun and wind, I am inclined to believe that this is older than any of the temples of Egypt, or even Nubia. We observed nowhere any sculptures that had been intentionally erased or disfigured; proving, I think, that the ruins were in their present state when Christianity was introduced into the country. The idols were already broken, and the ravages of time, or of war, had been so effectual, that they needed not the hand of fanaticism to complete them.' (p. 169–171).

The pyramids of Djebel el Berkel are on the north and north-west of the mountain, near the edge of the desert. They are seventeen in number, but some of them are now mere shapeless mounds. None of them are of considerable size: the base of the largest is eighty-one feet square. One group, consisting of seven, have all, with one exception, arched porticoes annexed to them, coeval, as it appeared, with the pyramids themselves.

At El Bellál, a rocky spot surrounded by sand, on the edge of the desert, six or seven miles above Djebel el Berkel, and situate on the left bank of the river, the remains may be seen of nearly forty pyramids of different sizes, of higher apparent antiquity than those of Djebel el Berkel, and in a more ruinous state than the most ruinous of those at Saccara. Mud seems to have been the cement employed in them. The greater part of them are now mere mounds of decomposed stone, gravel, and sand. Even in those which have best withstood the ravages of time,

the exterior coating has crumbled off, and the layers to some depth within have fallen away. The largest has a base of 152 feet square, and is 103 feet seven inches in height: it contains within it another pyramid of a different age and architecture, and composed of a hard, light, colored sand-stone, more durable,' says Mr. Waddington, than that, which, after sheltering it for ages, has at last decayed and fallen off, and left it once more exposed to the eyes of men.' The conclusion is too hasty. The outer case has been exposed to the winds and rains of thousands of years, while the inner pyramid has been completely sheltered: the less ruinous state of the latter is therefore no proof of the superior durability of its materials. They were informed that, in the island of Doulga, situated a short way up the river, immediately above a cataract, there were large excavations and buildings that reached to heaven.' These they supposed to have been fortifications, not temples; and that Doulga is the island in which the king of Dongola took refuge in 688 from the pursuit of the boats, and troops of the sultan of Egypt.

Mr. English's account of the country on each side of the river up to the pyramids of Merawé, where the voyage of Messrs. Waddington and Hanbury terminated, is pretty nearly the same as that of those gentlemen, though, on the whole, rather more favorable, both as it regards the people and the state of the cultivation. He praises the forbearance of the Turkish troops, though frequently reduced to the greatest distress for want of provisions. The only complaint he makes of taking by force the property of the wretched inhabitants, is directed against the Greek and Frank domestics of the protomedico, 'who seized whatever they thought they had occasion for.' The pacha soon put a stop to irregularities of this kind-The most rigid discipline was observed in the camp, to prevent the people of the country from suffering by the presence of the army. Some soldiers and domestics were severely beaten for taking sheep and goats without paying for them, and five of the ababdies (auxiliaries mounted on dromedaries) were impaled for having seized some camels from the peasants.'

Nothing, he says, could exceed the fertility of the country beyond the second cataract. The banks and islands presented one continued succession of villages amidst fields of grain, interspersed with stately palm trees, acacias, and sycamores, larger and taller than those of Egypt; and the fine broad river, swollen out in many places to the width of two or three miles, and studded with numerous fertile islands, conveyed to the eye a far more picturesque appearance than is observed in any part of the Said. This description applies more particularly to the territory of Succoot; the next beyond it, which is Mahass, though generally fertile, is inferior to the former. But of Dongola, he says, 'the whole country is absolutely overwhelmed with the products of the very rich soil of which it consists."

Yet the pacha's flotilla that conveyed his army, ammunition, and provisions, navigated the Nile beyond the second cataract without a rival. A constant intercourse however is kept up between the islands and the shores of the main land.