you with all the same. soap It is impossible to give an idea of the state of exhaustion to which one is reduced by this second operation; after which one is left for dead upon the flags, until profuse perspiration sets in. After about five minutes, one is inundated with boiling water, unless one prefers bathing in a piscina, in which eggs might be boiled. Then two fresh Arabs come and fetch you away, after having dried, rubbed, and wrapped you up carefully in soft towels.

Second station in the temperate zone. If you have neglected to put on your little wooden sandals, you execute fresh gambols upon the flags; but one rarely does forget after the first bruising, which survives the polishing. You are then packed up in another dozen of towels, and your Arab takes you up bodily in his arms, and carries you to a bed, where you enjoy, in perfect rest, all the benefit of this complicated bath. The cool temperature of the hall, the gardens into which deep trellised bays open, the beautifully decorated ceilings, the plashing fountains, and the flowers which surround you, produce an impression of animal beatitude complete beyond description.

The real fatigue of the preceding operations, and the immense satisfaction which you experience on

FAREWELL TO CAIRO.

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lying down, contribute to the wonderful sense of ease which pervades you from head to foot.

You sleep or you do not sleep; at all events you dream, while finely-dressed Arabs bring you an indefinite number of cups of coffee, ices, and liqueurs.

I took these baths frequently, and sometimes I brought my colour-box, and worked there. This was real bliss.

We must not linger over these debilitating recollections, but bid them, and indeed all Egypt, au revoir. Let us think of Sinai, Moses, and the manna of the Hebrews; for we are going to expiate all these worldly pleasures in the privation, sand, and fasting which await us in the desert, where we shall be reduced to one glass of water per diem for all purposes to which water is applicable.

Before starting from Cairo, we provided ourselves with a formidable supply of good wine, which enabled us to endure the drought of the desert, and gained us the esteem of the worst classes of the population.

This done, we bade adieu to wonderful, beautiful Cairo, where we would fain have remained for six months, so well did we know that we left behind much that is interesting to the student and the painter. The day of our departure was sad, by general consent. Each

of us went his own way, and I selected for my farewell pilgrimage the Gate of Victory and the Tombs of the Caliphs. To them I owed my first and fairest impressions of travel; of them I took a grateful leave, as the sun sank behind the Pyramids.

PART II.

SKETCH XI.

SINAI, ON DROMEDARIES.

Suez-A Little Piece of Canal Work-Our Official Dromedaries and their Suite-The Red Sea-Aïn Mousa, the Wells of Moses-Our Entry into the Desert.

IT was unanimously resolved that we were all to be very serious. We were fully alive to the gravity of this, our second expedition, involving real dromedaries and real desert, and not the smallest restaurant; so that it behoved us to assume quite a different demeanour, a necessity which some of our number regarded with apprehension. As for me, I began to study the Bible, and to practise Hebrew manners and gestures.

The city of Suez was not calculated to disturb our new-fledged gravity, but yet it did not justify the

severity of our good resolutions. We crossed the sands in a railway train, to this dirty little town, which sorely needed the cutting of the isthmus, to give it a little picturesqueness and animation.

Our tents were not to arrive until the following day, with our superb dromedaries, so that we had no resource but to go to the Hôtel Anglais, which is a dépôt for all the travellers for Indo-China and Japan. Unfortunately our arrival coincided with a departure, and the hotel was full. Our dragoman succeeded, after much parley and persistence, in procuring us shakedowns' in the principal sitting room. When we went to take possession of our beds, we found them already occupied by twelve Englishmen, who made room for us with a very bad grace.

The desert which divides Cairo from Suez is very. extraordinary in appearance, in consequence of the wonderful mobility of the sands which compose it. This white, impalpable dust undergoes the strangest transformations, as it follows the caprices of the wind. Now it is heaped up into mountains, anon into swelling domes, and the next day the same sand will lie spread out in a flat, monotonous, immense plain. The journey across it is very difficult to travellers, and even to the dromedaries themselves,