A Letter from Cairo. 107 



about ten o'clock. I had thus the daily opportunity of walking many miles 

 in advance of the boat, passing multitudes of the Fellahs, with their haggard 

 families, who were engaged, with the help of buffaloes, working rude ma- 

 chinery, in raising water from the Nile, for the purpose of irrigation. 

 Being generally alone, I sometimes felt a little odd as I encountered these 

 crowds, and noted the wild and wondering gaze which they fixed upon my 

 European complexion and dress. But I was slightly, though secretly, 

 armed, and took care to betray no fear or suspicion of evil, but returned 

 their gaze with steady composure, and found that they invariably blenched 

 from my eye. I have been since informed that I was exposed to a danger 

 from which other travellers, and very recently, had not escaped with equal 

 impunity. But neither on my road hither, nor since my arrival here, have 

 I (except in a single instance) suffered either injury or insult; though I 

 lounge away many hours a day through these crowded streets, and jostle 

 quietly out of my way the listless Turk, who never moves, if he can help it, 

 and stares with solemn astonishment at any movements quicker than his 

 own. 



After four days' navigation we arrived at Boulak, the port of Cairo, from 

 which it is two miles distant, after having passed, and viewed with in- 

 tense interest, the margin of that desert, which here, limited by the waters 

 of the Nile, extends westward, with little interruption, to the Atlantic, and 

 eastward and southward to the Indian Ocean. It is impossible to look at 

 this mighty feature of nature without awe. The art of navigation has con- 

 quered, as it were, the vastness of the ocean, and familiarized its terrors. 

 But who can tame the desert, or dare, unappalled, its immeasurable soli- 

 tudes ? A few skilful seamen, in a frail bark, can make the fiercest tem- 

 pests of the deep the ministers of their purposes. But the strength of 

 caravans, nay, of whole armies, is whelmed without a struggle beneath the 

 sandy whirlwind. We have learnt to "draw out leviathan with a hook," 

 but who can enchain the Bedouin ? Soon after our first view of the desert, 

 we descried, against the horizon, the three great pyramids, and had the 

 first experience of the power of vision which is enjoyed in the transparent 

 atmosphere of Egypt. They seemed to start up at once to sight j their 

 brilliant whiteness unmellowed by intervening air, and their enormous out- 

 line triumphing over the universal laws of perspective. Such as tiiey then 

 appeared, such they continued to a])pear during two days' approximation, 

 and such and no more was the impression of their magnitude, when I after- 

 wards stood within their broad shadow. After being a few iiours delayed 

 by tiie custom-house, which is managed and'farmed by Copts, who profess 

 Christianity, and will not la'uour on tlic Sunday, except tliey arc paid for it, 

 wc entered Cairo, escorted by a renegade Scotsman, who had introduced 

 himself to us at Boulak, and assisted us in our negociations respecting our 

 baggage. This man, it seems, was a hospital assistant in the ill-starred 

 expedition under General Eraser, was wounded, made prisoner, and, accord- 



