has not been of any value thus far. The villages are sleepy enough and the villagers are quiet as possible. The children. peer at you through the straw, the elder ones come clamoring for baksheesh, and there is sure to be a blind old soul to crave charity in the house of the most merciful God. You pass along through streets not more than a few feet wide, with dogs in the front and rear, and dogs barking from the roofs of the low mud huts thatched with straw. One or two of these expeditions generally satisfies even the most enterprising of our party; for Egyptian villages are, as far as I have seen, about the same. While some of us are ashore seeking adventure, and the others are clustered on the deck, chatting about friends and home and the incidents of the day, our sailors gather in a circle and we have Arab music. I cannot claim any knowledge of music, although many of my most pleasant memories are associated with its influence. This music of the Arabs is a school of its own, which I would defy even the genius of Wagner to embody. I have often thought that the spirit of a people is expressed in its music as much as in its literature and laws. The music of our Northern nations always seemed to ring with the sense of strength and victory. I remember how the music of the Southern slaves was a strange contrast to the fiery strains of their masters. There was a low, plaintive key in it that spoke of sadness, despair, degradation; that was more a moan and cry than a harmony. I fancied I heard the same plaintive cry in the music of the Arabs.

There is one thing whose enjoyment never ceases, at least with the writer-the beauty of the atmosphere and the sky. Sleep with me is so coy a dame, not always to be won by the most gentle and persistent wooing, that I am alive to all the incidents of the vessel. Before sunrise you hear the ropes released from the shore struggling back to the ship. You see the torches flashing up and down the bank, noting the preparations for departure. I sleep with my cheek almost against the wide window pane, almost on the level of the stream, and if I am weary of dreaming or of seeking for dreams, I have only to open my eyes to see the heavens in all their glory, the stars and constel

lations to see them again, as it were, embossed on the darkbrown river. You hear the cries of the sailors at their posts, and answering cries from the shore, and the boat pulls herself together like a strong man gathering for a race, and we are

JESSE GRANT.

away. You throw open your window and put your hand in the water, and feel the current play with your fingers with almost the old delight of childhood. The morning comes over the sands, and you watch the deep blue of the night melt into primrose and pearl. The brown sands of the desert become pale again, and the groves of date palms become palms in truth, and not the fancies that almost startle you during the night. In the early morning it is cool, and it is noon before the sun asserts

his power, and even then it is not a harsh dominion, for we have known no hour as yet when we could not walk up and down the deck in our fall garments without discomfort. Throughout the day there is that same open sky, the same clear atmosphere which makes far-distant objects as near as you find them in Colorado. Sometimes you see with wonder in the very heart of the desert grateful streams of water, skirted with palm and sheltered by hills. This is the mirage-one of the most frequent phenomena on the Nile. Sometimes a battalion of clouds will come from the east and marshal themselves from horizon to horizon, and the sight is rare, indeed, and you cannot know, you who live in the land of clouds and storm, what beauty they conceal. I am thinking of one sunset which I saw. The clouds had been following us all the afternoon, throwing their fleecy canopy over the plains of Thebes. Not ominous, black clouds, big with rain and thunder and bringing awe, but light,

trailing clouds, hanging over the heavens like gossamer. There was the desert, coming almost down to the rivergrudging the Nile even the strip of green which marked the line of the telegraph. There was the desert—vast, wide, barren— with no vestige of life beyond a belated peasant driving his camel, or a flock of birds hurrying as we came. So the clouds were a comfort, and we watched them at their play, grateful for anything that took our thoughts from the scene of endless and irretrievable desolation. Then as the sun went down there came the struggle between coming night and the stern, burning majesty of the eternal monarch of nature. The pearls and grays became crimson and saffron. The sun shot forth his power in a sunburst of light. There were ridges of crimson and gold, luminous and flashing that it might almost seem to burn and hiss like flames in the forge. Then came the tranquil blue-blue of every shade—every conceivable tint of blue-from that which Murillo threw into the eyes of the wonder-stricken Madonna in the supreme moment of her joy, to the deep violet blue which tells of the passion, the patriotism, and the revenge of Judith. The struggle still went on, but the victory was not with the sun, and it only remained for him to die as became a great king. The palm grew dim in the shadows. The flaming tints of crimson and scarlet and gold became brown and black. The desert flushed with purple-with the purple of wine-and it seemed as if old Egypt's kings spoke from the desert that was once their throne, proclaiming their sovereignty. All that was left was the line of green that had become black, and the desert that had become black, and the glorious sky above, with the glory of conquering night; and about us this land of eternal summer, beautiful even in death-beautiful with the beauty of death.