128 Madden's Travels in Turkey, fyc. 



this the author will not agree to. The Coptic head is altoge- 

 ther of a different form. A line drawn across the orbits from 

 one external angle of the eye to the other, is in the Copt half 

 an inch longer than the same line of the mummy head. Hero- 

 dotus describes the old Egyptians, among whom he was ac- 

 tually residing, as a people of black skins and short woolly 

 hair. The Copts have neither the one nor the other. They 

 were, in all probability, adds the author, a colony in Lower 

 Egypt, in the time of the Egyptians, speaking their language, 

 but not of their race. 



" It is among the Nubians," says Mr. Madden, " that we 

 must search for the true descendants of the Egyptians ; a 

 swarthy race, with wiry hair; surpassing, in the beauty of their 

 slender forms, all the people of the East ; living on the confines 

 of Egypt, whither probably their ancestors had been driven by 

 the Persians, and possessing a dialect which, though mixed 

 with Arabic, no Arab understands." The measurement of the 

 Nubian head corresponds with that of the mummy in every 

 particular. 



Having completed his survey of Egypt, the author prepared 

 to visit Palestine. His journey across the Desert, tedious and 

 painful as it was, afforded him the opportunity of making many 

 interesting observations. These we must here endeavour to 

 abridge. 



Leaving San in company with his Bedouin guides, he started 

 for Suez on a camel. The soil, for the first fifteen miles, (as 

 far as Salehie,) was covered with a saline crust like hoar frost, 

 which impeded vegetation, but did not altogether prevent it. 

 The true sandy desert begins at Salehie, a string of miserable 

 villages, with a population of about 8000 souls, shaded by a 

 long row of date trees. A party of Bedouins, encamped in the 

 neighbouring plains, received them kindly. A kamsin wind set 

 in the following evening, attended with its usual debilitating 

 effects. The sun was obscured with yellow clouds ; the air 

 was loaded with particles of sand ; breathing became difficult. 

 Sand was driving in furiously with the wind through every cre- 

 vice in the tent, penetrating books and clothes, though tied up 

 in a hair skin sack ; it even got into the author's watch-case. 

 The thermometer, at two o'clock, stood at 110° in the shade, 

 and in the sand outside the tent, at 135°. , The tent itself was 

 like an oven. Starting at dawn next morning, our traveller 

 soon lost all trace of vegetation ; and he often wondered how, 

 without landmark, trace in the sand, or compass, the Bedouins 

 contrived to follow the proper route. Their whole study 



