and trying by all means to maintain peace internally and externally. The only two great wars upon which she has. engaged were entered upon for pure and just purposes— the first for releasing herself from the English yoke and erecting her independence, and the other for stopping slavery and strengthening the union of the States; and well we know that it was mainly, under God, due to the talent, courage and wisdom of his excellency, General Grant, that the latter of the two enterprises was brought to a successful issue." The speech closed by a tribute to the General and the Khedive. General Grant said in response that nothing in his whole trip had so impressed him as this unexpected, this generous welcome in the heart of Egypt. He had anticipated great pleasure in his visit to Egypt, and the anticipation had been more than realized. He thanked his host, and especially the young man who had spoken of him with so high praise, for their reception. The dinner dissolved into coffee, conversation and cigars.

On the 21st, at the town of Girgel, the General and party take to the donkeys and make a trip under the broil. ing hot sun, to the ruined city of Abydos. This was the oldest city in Egypt. It went back to Menes, the first of the Egyptian Kings, who reigned, according to Egyptian history, four thousand five hundred years before Christ. The ruins are on a grand scale. Abydos is a temple which the Khedive is rescuing from the sand. Here, according to tradition, was buried the god Osiris. To the ancient Egyptian, the burial place of that god was as sacred as Mecca to the Moslems, or the Holy Sepulchre was to the Mediæval Christians. The government is trying to reclaim this temple, and has been digging in all directions. One excavation over fifty feet deep was visited. Remnants of an old house or tomb could be seen. Millions of fragments of broken pottery around. The strata, that age after age had heaped upon the buried

city, were plainly visible. The city was really a city of tombs. In the ancient days the devout Egyptian craved burial near the tomb of Osiris, and so for centuries their remains were brought to Abydos from all parts of Egypt. Lunch was taken with Salib, an Arabian, who had for twenty years been working at the excavations, working with so much diligence that he had become entirely blind, and it is now his only comfort to wander through the ruins, direct the workmen, and trace with his finger many a loved inscription that his zeal has brought to light. Salib lives near the ruin, on a pension allowed by the Khedive. After an hour's rest, having ridden fifteen miles on donkeys and walked two or three in the sand, the visitors returned to the shelter and repose of the cabin of the Vandalia.

We next find our visitors at Thebes, once a city that covered both banks of the Nile, was known to Homer as the city of the hundred gates. It had a population of three hundred thousand inhabitants, and sent out twenty thousand armed chariots. It was famed for its riches and its splendor until it was besieged. Here was the temple of Memnon and its colossal statues, and the palace temple of the great Rameses, the only ruin in Egypt known to be the home of a King; the columns of the Luxor, and the stupendous ruins of Kanark, and the tombs of the kings. Visiting the town of Luxor, a collection of houses built upon the ruins of the old temple, erected over three thousand years ago; there is a fine obelisk here, the companion to the one now standing in the Place Concordia, Paris; also a statue of Rameses, of colossal size, now broken and partly buried in the sand. Next morning the party crossed the river, and prepared for a ride to visit Memnon statues; arrived at their destination, they found all that is left of Memnonism are the two colossal statues. A good part of the base is buried in the earth, but they loom up over the plain, and can be seen miles and miles away. Some idea of their size can be formed,

when it is known that the statue measures eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders, sixteen feet six inches from the top of the shoulder to the elbow, and the portions of the body in due proportion. After examining these statues and resting a half hour, they visited the temple of Medesnet Habro, one of the great temples of Thebes, and the palace temple of the great Rameses, who lived thirteen hundred years before Christ, and is supposed by some to be the Pharaoh that brought the plagues upon Egypt. The walls of the palace are covered with inscriptions. After carefully exploring these interesting ruins, and luncheon being served in one of the old King's apartments, our party returned by the route of the early morning. Next morning, after a ride of forty minutes from Luxor, our party were at the ruined temple of Kanark, built in the days of Abraham. It is hard to realize that in the infinite and awful past, in the days when the Lord came down to the earth and communed with men and gave His commandments, these columns and statues, these plinths and entablatures, these mighty, bending walls, upon which chaos has put its seal, were the shrines of a nation's faith and sovereignty; yet this is all told in stone.

Kanark, which was not only a temple, but one in the series of temples which constituted Thebes, is about half a mile from the river, a mile or two from the temple of Luxor. The front wall or propylon is 370 feet broad, 50 feet deep, and the standing tower 140 feet high. Leading up to this main entrance is an avenue, lined with statues and sphinxes, 200 feet long. When you enter this gate, you enter an open court-yard 275 feet by 329. There is a corrider or cloister on either side; in the middle a double line of columns, of which only one remains. We now come to another wall or propylon, as large as the entrance, and enter the great hall the most magnificent ruin in Egypt. The steps of the door are 40 feet by 10. The

room is a 170 feet by 329, and the roof was supported by 134 columns. These columns are all or nearly all standing, but the roof has gone. Twelve are 62 feet high without the plinth, and 11 feet 6 inches in diameter. One hundred and twenty-two are 42 feet 5 inches in height, and 28 feet in circumference. They were all brilliantly colored, and some of them retain their colors still; and you can well imagine what must have been the blaze of light and color, when the kings and priests passed through in solemn procession. We pass through another gate into an open court. Here is an obelisk in granite 75 feet high, and the fragments of another, its companion. The inscriptions on them are as clear as though they had been cut yesterday, so gentle is this climate in its dealings with time. They celebrate the victories and virtues of the kings who reigned 1700 years before Christ, and promise the kings in the name of the immortal gods that their glory shall live for ages. We pass into another chamber very much in ruins, and see another obelisk, 92 feet high and 8 feet square — the largest in the world. This monument commemorates the virtues of the king's daughter-womanly and queenly virtues, which met their reward, let us hope, thirty-five centuries ago. One may form some idea of what the Egyptians could do in the way of mechanics and engineering, when it is known that this obelisk is a single block of granite, that it was brought from the quarry, miles and. miles away, erected and inscribed, in seven months. The next room was the sanctury, the holy of holies, and is now a mass of rubbish requiring nimble feet to climb. We scramble over stones and sand, until we come to what was the room where King Amenophis III., who lived sixteen centuries before Christ, was represented as giving offerings to fifty-six of his royal predecessors. The hall is a ruin, and some French Vandals carried off the tablet - one of the most valuable in Egypt-to Paris. Altogether the