insensible on the ground, to rise, but for this interposition, nơ more, they were met by a large and friendly caravan, which, in consequence of a false report of two or three thousand men being waiting on the road to attack them, had diverted a great way from their proper road, and fallen exactly into the line in which our traveller had been advancing, in the contrary direction They threw large quantities of water on the men, as they found them, one after another, lying senseless on the sand, and gave it plentifully to them and the beasts to drink; and so effectual was the relief, that they all revived and reached their destination. The tract they were traversing, is thus described:

Not a tree is to be seen; nor a rock which can offer a shelter or shade. A transparent atmosphere, an intense sun, darting its beams upon our heads, a ground almost white, and commonly of a concave form, like a burning glass, slight breezes, scorching like flame.'

We transcribe a few sentences of the narration.

At two in the afternoon, a man dropped down stiff as if he were dead. I stopped with three or four of my people to assist him. The little wet which was left in one of the leather budgets was squeezed out of it, and some drops of water poured into the poor man's mouth, but without effect. I began to feel that my own strength was beginning to forsake me.' From this moment others of my caravan began to drop successively, and there was no possibility of giving them any assistance; they were abandoned to their unhappy destiny, as every one thought only of saving himself. Several mules with their burthens were left behind, and I found on my way two of my trunks on the ground, without knowing what was become of the mules which: had been carrying them. The drivers had forsaken them, as well as the care of my effects and instruments.

.

'I looked upon this loss with the greatest indifference as if they had not belonged to me, and pushed on. But my horse began now to tremble under me, and yet he was the strongest of the whole caravan. We proceeded in silent despair. When I endeavoured to encourage any of them to increase his pace, he answered me by looking steadily at me, and by putting his forefinger to his mouth to indicate the great thirst by which he was affected.' Our fate was the more shocking, as every one of us was sensible of the impossibility of supporting the fatigue to the place where we were to meet with water. At last, about four in the evening, I had my turn, and fell down with thirst and fatigue. Extended without consciousness on the ground in the middle of the desert, left only with four or five men, one of whom had dropped at the same moment with myself, and all without any means of assisting me, I should have perished with them on the spot, if Providence, by a kind of miracle, had not preserved us.'

He then relates the happy intervention. He says that when he became sensible, and wished to speak to his kind restorers, an invincible knot in his throat seemed to hinder him.' He af

terwards describes the manner in which the victim of this fearful destitution of water is affected.

This attack of thirst is perceived all of a sudden, by an extreme aridity of the skin; the eyes appear to be bloody, the tongue and mouth, both inside and outside, are covered with a crust of the thickness of a crown piece; this crust is of a dark yellow colour, of an insipid taste, and of the consistence of the soft wax from a bee-hive. A faintness and languor take away the power to move; a kind of knot in the throat and diaphragm, attended with great pain, interrupts respiration. Some wandering tears escape from the eyes, and at last the sufferer drops down to the earth, and in a few moments loses all consciousness."

He had a safe but rough and hazardous voyage to Tripoli, where renewed civilities and honours awaited him. But before proceeding to this part of the story, he goes into the famous question of the site of the ancient island Atlantis, which he will maintain to have been no other than the very ridge of the Atlas itself, anciently surrounded by the ocean to its base; and he pretends to find good evidence for the once submarine state of what is now a vast sandy desert, in the composition of its substance, and the lowness of its level as now evident relatively to the sea. He is still more zealous and confident on a theory of a sea or enormous lake now existing in the centre of Africa; towards the assumed locality of which sea, the Niger, and other named rivers, take their direction from the different points of the compass. It is impossible, he professes, even to demonstrate, that all these waters can be disposed of any other way. He does not seem to have even heard the name of the Zaire, which brings out into the Atlantic, probably from the central region, as much water as all bis enumerated streams carry toward that region: It is nothing unlikely that there may be one, or more than one, considerable lake about the centre of Africa; but, for some little time to come, any laborious discussion of the matter among speculative geographers, would be a lamentable and impertinent waste of time: two resolute, well-appointed bands of practical geographers will, we hope, before many months, be actually and with impunity, seeing the objects of so many vain conjectures and presumptions, and making, in the midst of the scene, observations and sketches which shall render familiar in Europe the geography and imagery of this, as yet, most unknown tract on the globe.

At Tripoli the Bey set sail for Alexandria, but was actually earried, through the stupidity of the Turkish captain, to the Morea, then to within sight of Alexandria, and back again to Cyprus, of various antiquities in which island he has given a considerably interesting description. At last, after more perils, we have no doubt, than have sometimes occurred in a circun

navigation of the world, he attained Alexandria, Cairo, and the shore of the Red Sea. In this sea, which has never been crossed without danger but once, of which the treacherous and deadly character is so much akin to that of the perfidious and malignant Mussulman barbarians on its shores, the voyagers passed within the narrowest possible distance of destruction, and were saved for the purpose, the worthy purpose, of touching the Holy and forbidden Land,' of beholding the awful fane of the Devil's most successful individual Agent on earth, of performing all the devout antics, sweepings, and drenchings of the Kaaba.

Not only the temple and city, but the whole region, to a great extent, is sacred, and interdicted to all unbelievers. It is peculiarly, therefore, in this part of his work, that our Author's hypocritical guise has enabled him to confer an obligation on the inquisitive infidels, by a more precise and minute description of what, however, was, in substance, well known before. The same deception and privilege have obtained for us the results of an admission into the grand mosque on the site of Solomon's Temple. These two mosques are regarded as pre-eminently distinguished by an intense and awful sanctity.

The Mussulman religion acknowledges but two temples, that of Mecca, and that of Jerusalem; both are named in Arabic, El Haram, which strictly signifies a temple or place consecrated by the peculiar presence of the Divinity; both are equally prohibited by the law to Christians, Jews, and every other person who is not a Mussulman. The mosques are named in Arabic, El Djammàa, or the place of assembly; they are respectable places it is true, but they are not consecrated by the especial presence of the Divinity. Entrance into them is not prohibited to Infidels by any canonical precept; the people, however, do not like to see strangers in them, nor can the latter enter them except by virtue of an order from a public authority; for, even at Constantinople, Christians enter the mosque of St. Sophia, and the other mosques, when they are bearers of a firman granted by the government. But no Mussulman governor dares permit an infidel to pass into the territory of Mecca, or into the temple of Jerusalem. A permission of this kind would be looked upon as a horrid sacrilege; it would not be respected by the people; and the infidel would become the victim of his impudent boldness.”—Vol. II. p. 215.

The description of the orgies in Mecca and its vicinity is ample and circumstantial, and carries in its manner the strongest, marks oftruth: it is all in the plain matter of fact style, and is extremely lively and striking merely by its crowded, changing, tumultuous, and fanatical exhibition. Wanting that direfulness which has so generally characterized the grand celebrations of Paganism, in consequence of cruelty and blood constituting a part of the rites, these solemnities of Islam may, however, be

placed in rivalry with any of them in frenzy and fantastic silliess. They display an astonishing illustration of the certainty which the principle of Evil has of an irresistible triumph when permitted to act upon its congenial element the human spirit, without any counteractive moral element divinely interposed. They illustrate the utter uselessness and worthlessness of whatever in that spirit may be called Reason, unenlightened and ungoverned by a Superior Agency. And they exemplify to the last excess that distinctive quality of superstition, that it devotes and prostrates the greatest passions to the most ridiculously paltry objects.

The account is far too long to be all transcribed, and has too rapid a succession of particulars to be satisfactorily abridged. Every step, after landing on the sacred territory, was to be considered by the pilgrims as in some sort a devotional act, and the Bey was of course to be in a state to be susceptible of the most solemn impression when he should come on a sudden, in near view of El Kaaba, the house of God.'

The guide arrested our steps, and pointing with his finger, said, with emphasis, "Schouf, schouf, el beit Allah el Haram,-Look, look, the house of God, the prohibited." The crowd that surrounded me; the immense size of the temple; the Kaaba, or house of God, covered with the black cloth from top to bottom, and surrounded with a circle of lamps, or lanterns; the hour; the silence of the night; (quare;) and this man speaking in a solemn tone, as if he had been inspired; all served to form an imposing picture, which will never be effaced from my memory.

Being arrived at the house of God, we repeated a little prayer, kissed the sacred black stone brought by the Angel Gabriel, named Hajera el Assouad, or the Heavenly Stone; and, having the guide at our head, we performed the first tour round the Kaaba, reciting prayers. It is a quadrilateral tower, entirely covered with an immense black cloth, except the base. The black stone is discovered through an opening in the cloth.

The Heavenly Stone is raised forty-two inches above the surface, and is bordered all round with a large plate of silver, about a foot broad. The part of the stone that is not covered by the silver at the angle is almost a semicircle, six inches in height, by eight inches six lines in diameter at its base.

It is a fragment of volcanic basalts, which is sprinkled throughout its circumference with small pointed coloured crystals, and varied with red feldspar, upon a dark black ground like coal. The continual kissings and touchings of the faithful have worn the surface uneven, so that it has now a muscular appearance.

We believe that this miraculous stone was a transparent hyacinth, brought from heaven to Abraham by the angel Gabriel, as a pledge of his Divinity; and, being touched by an impure woman, became black and opaque.'

The accompanying engraving of this stone gives but a very

indistinct idea of it; indeed, how should Ali, or any body else, have had the means of making an accurate drawing.

The prayers, the circumambulations of the Kaaba, the washings, the shavings, the potations of the sacred water of the miraculous well of Zemzem, were followed at the proper time by the grand coronation ceremony, the highest honour and bliss of the faithful short of paradise, the sublime devotional act which formally constitutes the performer Hhaddem-Beit Allah el 'Haram, or servant of the forbidden house of God;'-this was the washing of the floor of the Kaaba, on which water is copiously thrown by appointed persons, while the privileged and unspeakably envied devotee works away with a bundle of 'small brooms.' 'I began my duty,' says our man of sham, 'by 'sweeping with both hands, with an ardent faith, although the 'floor was quite clean, and as polished as glass.' And when he had finished, he was dubbed amidst solemn prayers, with the title we have named, and received from the vast croud the most animated congratulations. That these were most sincere, so far as expressing a full conviction of the value of the privilege which so many could not obtain, is evinced by the eagerness of the crowd to catch and drink some of the water as it was flowing out from under the door of the Kaaba.

Another part of the pilgrim's duties, is the procession to Mount Arafat, on which the common father of all mankind met Eve after a long separation; and it is on that account that it is called Arafat, that is to say, gratitude. It is believed that it was Adam himself who built the Chapel.' There was a prodigious mob of them, and there they were to wait till the setting of the sun. Then the tide turned, and

What a tremendous noise! let us imagine an assemblage of eighty thousand men, two thousand women, and a thousand little children, sixty or seventy thousand camels, asses, and horses, which at the commencement of night began to move in a quick pace, along a narrow valley, according to the ritual, marching one after the other in a cloud of sand, and delayed by a forest of lances, guns, swords, &c.; in short, forcing their passage as they could. Pressed and hur ried on by those behind, we only took an hour and a half to return to Modelifa, notwithstanding it had taken us more than two hours to arrive in the morning. The motive of this precipitation, ordered by the ritual is, that the prayer of the setting sun or Mogreb, ought not to be said at Arafat, but at Modelifa, at the same time as the night prayer, or Ascha, which ought to be said at the last moment of twilight, that is, an hour and a half after sun-set.'

He mentions one circumstance in the economy of all these sanctities, which is not perhaps in any great degree incongruous with the rest: the very dignified personage,-for he is in bigh favour with the superior powers in the state, who bears the title and office of Chief of the Well of Zemzem,' may actu