44 THE HORSE AND HIS EIDER. 



taking a fence, jumped over it into a stone quarry. 

 Now, if he had been in the bent attitude we have 

 described, he must inevitably have pitched on, and 

 have fractured his skull. From, however, sitting cor- 

 rectly on his saddle, his ankles, and not his head, suffered. 

 In like manner when Mehemet Ali, under the pretence 

 of investing his son, Toossoon Pacha, with the command 

 of an army, by a treacherous invitation inveigled the 

 Mamelukes into the summit of the citadel of El Kahira 

 (the Victorious), commonly called Cairo, and then sud- 

 denly dropping the portcullis, directed upon them from 

 barred windows on three sides a murderous fire, Amyn 

 Bey, rather than submit to such a death, spurring his 

 Arab charger over his writhing comrades, and across the 

 low crenated wall, jumped over a precipice of about fifty 

 feet ; and yet, although of the horse it may truly be said 

 that 



" Headlong from the mountain's height 

 He plunged to endless night," 



for, on reaching the hard rock, he was smashed to death, 

 the rider, who, no doubt, had expected the same fate, 

 was enabled, with only a broken ankle, to crawl away, 

 recover, and for nearly thirty years enjoy, with health 

 and wealth, the well-earned appellation of " the last of 

 the Mamelukes;" in short 



" The man recovered from the blow, the horse it was that died." 



