Maruchi and his Coptic friends to accompany us in extending our ride to this depôt.

The road towards it was beautifully diversified with full foliaged trees, yielding the most agreeable shade by their overhanging branches, and forming regular avenues in some places as if purposely planted to enclose agreeable promenades, and the distance being short, we reached there sufficiently early to make the tour of the camp at leisure. Within a circumference of about three miles, whose interior was interspersed with enclosures of small reeds for the drivers of the caravan, were included such a mixture of camels, sheep, visitors, purchasers, and negroes, merchants and slaves, of every age and sex, from the new-born infant to bending decrepitude, that we knew not where to examine first, or which way to turn our attention.

Near the spot where we dismounted, the second captain of this sable troop was smoking beneath a ragged tent, the only one to be seen in the encampment, as such distinctions were reserved for the great. He was himself a negro of advanced age, and was armed with two slightly curved knives, one of them braced to each of his arms above his elbow, and without scabbards, while his dress was perfectly Egyptian, his only covering being a long and ample shirt as worn by the Arabs here, and of a quality little finer than topgallant canvas. We seated ourselves beneath the tent with him, and as the natives of the country seldom make the shortest excursion without their pipe and tobacco purse, that of the negro was soon filled from our own stock, by which the threshold of familiarity was reciprocally passed; so powerful is even the influence of the most trifling civilities, and by this alone we cheaply purchased the favour of his communications.

It appeared, from his narration, that throughout the kingdom of Darfour and all its surrounding country of which he possessed any knowledge, war was the principal pursuit of the males, the females being occupied in the cares of agriculture, and tending their flocks. The object of all their wars appeared to be gain alone, since it was generally commenced by the strongest party, who remunerate themselves for the charges of their equipments by the capture of prisoners, these being in all cases the property of the captors. Whole villages and towns were thus frequently taken for the sake of the inhabitants they contained, so that the commerce in human beings was so superior in extent to all other kinds of traffic, that every article of purchase or sale bore a rate of value of which the price of slaves was made the standard. In short, prisoners of war were so much the staple article of trade, that they had become the sterling money of account, by reference to which all commercial as well as tributary payments were regulated. He added, that elephants' teeth, tamarinds, and gums, entered into their investments for Egypt, but these all in inconsiderable quantities, and that of golddust, none came through this route.

The present caravan had assembled at the town of Cobbé, the capital of Darfour, in the month of June last, when the officers, according to the usual custom, became responsible for its safe conduct, in consideration of a stated tribute from man and beast. The merchants had embarked with their own trading commodities and every necessary of provision for their journey on their own camels ; the slave dealers furnished every requisite also for the sustenance of their living wares; and all those accompanying the caravan, who were not slaves or prisoners, were private speculators in some way or other of trade. After a variety of delays, from causes of various kinds, they commenced their march with upwards of ten thousand people, beside the beasts of burden, and journeying three months in the desert, had reached here with less than half that number, and those completely worn out.

From some negligence or error, which no one would acknowledge to be his own, they had lost the path in the early part of their route, when provisions at length began to fall short, and of the unfortunate slaves, who walk all the way on foot, many died of hunger, thirst, and fatigue, while others who survived the rigours of these combined circumstances, were flogged to death for the crime of being weary!-women were' left in labour on the roads, remote from every shadow of assistance; mutinies arose: camels died; and the most robust among them began to sink beneath such a complicated load of difficulties; so that their numbers diminished daily, and they considered it as almost a miracle that the fragment which had reached here had not perished in the desert also.

From these unhappy circumstances, and their immense losses, every article brought by the caravan was unusually dear, so that slaves of the ordinary value of fifty dollars were now refused for two or three hundred, which considerably exceeded the prices at Cairo, as the best slaves seldom exceed from a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars in value. The leader added that the caravan would remain here, until all their commodities were disposed of, purchasing their returns in the meantime, which consist of coarse woollen and cotton cloths; ordinary arms and ammunition, and gilded trinkets for the women of the negro court. This, however, he thought would occcupy some months yet, but when completed, they would then set out for Darfour, to exchange these articles for slaves and the productions of the country, with which they would return to Egypt again.

In reply to the questions which we put to him relative to the Islands of Oasis,' or Isles of the Desert, he replied that six or eight days' journey from hence, there were several small spots of verdure, known by the general name of El Wah,' and that these were inhabited by Arabs, who fed their flocks there and traded in dates, but that he recollected nothing of any ruined buildings, caverns, tombs, or any vestiges of ruins throughout the whole of

them, adding that in the road thither no water was to be found, and that the Bedouins of the country were great robbers, for both of which reasons the caravans generally halted to obtain refreshments at these spots, to repose their beasts, acquire information of the state of tranquillity or of danger that prevailed on the roads, and make their arrangements accordingly.

This sable captain of the host, had acquired such a proficiency in the Arabic language, by repeated visits to Siout, that we were enabled to converse with him very readily, through a Coptic merchant of our party, who spoke Italian, and his curious description of scenes which often fell beneath his observation, very amply repaid our attention. He offered also to escort us through his camp, and as it is frequently the safest, as well as the most honourable to be with the general, we willingly accepted his proposal.

The males of the caravan, except the youngest boys, were already all disposed of, as well as the pregnant females who are bought up with avidity, for nurses to the children of families at Cairo. Among those who now remained, therefore, few exceeded twenty years of age, the boys being completely naked, and the girls in the same state of nature, while the women who had passed the age of puberty wore a simple ceinture of ragged cotton cloth around their loins. All of them wore the woolly hair, disposed in an infinite number of small traces, with pieces of lead attached to the bottom of each separate one, to straiten and lengthen it at the same time. From large bowls of rancid fat, they plastered all this so thickly with grease, that the sun soon occasioned it to melt and run in streams down their jetty limbs, giving to them the lustre of polished ebony. They laughed loudly, hid their faces, ran from us, and came back again to gaze on us, being evidently much more impressed with wonder and astonishment at our singular dress and figure, than we were at theirs. Independently of their colour, they were in general extremely ugly. Among the various ways in which the females were employed, some were bruising corn between small stones, others assisting in the preparation of provisions; but by far the greater number of them were occupied in hunting each other's bodies for a prey, which, when caught, they cracked between their teeth; others were seen tracing each other's hair, with which they seemed to take the greatest possible pains, and after these operations, receiving on their ebon skin the odorous essence of animal fat, adjusting their beaded neck-laces, bracelets, and ancle-ornaments, of which many of them wore several strings, and basking in the sun.

The descriptions of several of the early African nations, which Herodotus has given us, were many of them fresh in my memory, and I could not help imagining a coincidence of some particulars, with the manners of those who were now before us, especially in what he says of the Adyrmachida. The nations of Africa are

many and various: few of them had ever submitted to Darius, and most of them held him in contempt. Beginning from Egypt the Africans are to be enumerated in the following order :-The first are the Adyrmachidæ, whose manners are in every respect Egyptian, their dress African; on each leg their wives wear a ring of brass; they suffer their hair to grow; if they catch any fleas upon their bodies, they first bite and then throw them away. They are the only people of Africa who do this. It is also peculiar to them to present their daughters to the king just before their marriage.

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The Adyrmachida occupy the country between Egypt and the port of Pleumos.'-Melpomene, 148. Speaking of the Nassamones, he says, 'Each person is allowed to have several wives with whom they live in the manner of the Massagatæ, first fixing a staff in the earth before the tent. When the Nassamones marry, the bride admits every one of the guests to her favors, each of whom makes her a present brought with him for that purpose."Melpomene, 172. And again, The Gindanes are next to the Macæ. Of the wives of this people, it is said that they wear round their ancles as many bandages as they have had lovers. The more of these each possesses, the more she is esteemed, as having been beloved by a greater number of the other sex."-Melpomene, 176.

Some of these coincidences, notwithstanding that those particulars are related of the nations along the northern coast, were evident to our own observation; and the more closely we questioned our informer as to the reason why these bandages, or rings of beads and metal were worn round the ancles, the more it seemed probable that the motive was not unlike that of the wives of Gindane. With regard to the king possessing any right of claiming the daughters of his subjects before their marriage, it seemed that the will of the sovereign was in this respect all that was necessary to obtain whomsoever he might select; but though the custom of the Nasamones still existed of their having several wives, with whom they lived as openly as the Massagatæ, to whom they are compared, yet the fashion which then prevailed of the bride entertaining the wedding-guests, seems to be now no longer known; the tincture given to their manners by the introduction of Mohammedanism, having, no doubt, made them less liberal in the distribution of those marks of welcome, than their idolatrous ancestors.

It was nearly sun-set when we left the camp, and our return was rendered delightful by the cool air of the twilight. After an early supper à l'Orientale, the incidents of our afternoon ramble furnished us with interesting matter for a long evening's conversation, and we retired to beds which had been prepared for us in Signore Maruchi's house.

Lycopolis, Nov. 10.

A resident merchant of the place, who from frequent visits to the

tombs of Lycopolis, in the neighbouring mountain, had acquired a perfect knowledge of all its winding labyrinths, having offered to become our guide thither, we furnished the servants with provisions for the day, and taking them with us, commenced our excursion with the opening of the dawn.

Passing over an elevated causeway, bordered with a range of fine trees, and crossing the ruins of a Saracenic bridge, destroyed by the Mamlouks on some occasion of revolt here, we reached the foot of the mountain in half an hour after leaving the town, and were at the first tomb by sun-rise. Denon's plan of it is infinitely more correct than the drawing, in which the outline form of the entrance is the only resemblance preserved. Hewn out of the solid rock, without the least appearance of masonry, the sides of the outer porch are covered with hieroglyphics, in columns separated from each other by perpendicular lines, some of which are still very perfect, and others almost obliterated. The arched roof appears to have been originally studded with white stars on an azure ground, and judging from the groups of them which are now visible, must have been extremely beautiful in its first perfection. The entrance from the outer porch into the tomb itself, is through a door-way of narrow dimensions across, and of a disproportionate height, every part of which is full of sculptured figures also, but presents no appearance of its ever having been closed. The first chamber, which is considerably larger than the outer porch, has its walls covered with hieroglyphics too, and its stuccoed roof decorated with longitudinal chains of flowers, and other similar devices, many of which resemble the patterns at present in use in England for the borders of paper-hangings in rooms-the whole being here painted in light and dark shades of a beautifully clear blue. The inner chambers, the lateral wings, and even the sanctuaries themselves wherein the dead were deposited, are every where enriched with a profusion of ornaments, but nothing like a Sarcophagus, or the vestiges of bodies, were to be seen.

The skill, the labour, the time, and the expence which the execution of such a monument must have required, all strike one with astonishment, when we enter into the detail of calculation. The tomb of our Seventh Henry, at Westminster, is regarded as an extravagance in England, yet even all the wealth which that avaricious monarch lavished on it, would have been inadequate in his own realm, to have procured him such a splendid sepulchre as this must originally have been. Such comparisons powerfully awaken one's curiosity to know the minutest circumstances relating to a people whose ordinary tombs eclipse in splendour and in greatness the richest mausoleums of our richest kings. The idea was for a moment only humiliating, but when contrasting the superior wisdom of improving the happiness of the living, to the practice of heaping up magnificence and funereal pomp for the unconscious