"Reaching the summit of the pyramid, we throw ourselves on its rugged pavement, hot, thirsty, breathless, after a neck-and-neck race up the last hundred steps, each nearly a yard high; but the dewy pitcher is at hand, we drink a deep cold draught of the Nile's sweet water, inhale the fresh breeze of the desert, five hundred feet above its level, and then gaze north, south, east and west, in long involuntary silence... North, we look down the river, expanding into the broad Delta of Egypt, with its green plains, brown villages, and groves of palm. South, we look up the river, contracting its channel into the narrow valley of Egypt, still with green fields and groves of palm, but walled in with barriers of steep and lofty cliffs ten miles asunder. East, we look across the

river upon the domes and minarets of Cairo, bounded by barren rocks and backed by the wilderness of Arabia. West, is the African Sahara, backed by nothing and bounded by nothing, but its own trembling horizon. Sand, dry, flat, and hot; sand, glaring, blinding, and burning; sand, dreary, trackless, and lifeless!

"At our feet is a city of the ancient dead, the Necropolis of Memphis, the burial-place of Noph, the 'desolate places of her kings and counsellors,' lofty pyramids, subterranean galleries, square mummy pits, (many now broken and rifled,) and granite sarcophagi.

"Many a mummy pit lies open before us, rifled of its dead, whose remains are scattered about; brown, dusty, crumbling shreds and patches of what was once a man ... What hast thou gained by kicking against the pricks, rebelling against the law?'earth to earth, ashes to ashes!' for dust thou art,' after all the swaddling and swathing, and 'unto dust must thou return!'... After three thousand years (thou art) grubbed up as a curious, withered, wizened thing, unrobed and unwrapped, and flung abroad as a rotten memorial of pitiful ambition! ... Could not all the wisdom of the Egyptians teach thee that there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body?' and that in due season 'this corruptible

must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality?"-NOZRANI in Egypt.

MUMMY PITS OF SACCARA.

"THE great curiosity of Saccara, is the Ibis mummy pit, into which we crawl on all-fours till we find ourselves by torchlight in the presence of many hundreds of earthern jars, which might at first pass for red chimney-pots, except that the narrow ends are oval, and the broad capped with white mortar or cement. These red sugar-loaf shaped pots are piled like empty wine bottles in rows one above the other, and each of them contains, curiously swaddled, embalmed, packed, and potted, a genuine, ancient, and sacred Ibis. We, like other travellers, break open an unreasonable number for the sake of a perfect specimen, but when exposed they soon crumble to powder; some of the heads and long beaks come out perfect, and the black and grey plumage of the wings is very discernible. The cave is full of broken pottery and Ibis dust, sacrificed to the curiosity of new comers, who hammer away without scruple, when they are told that thousands more remain in close-packed order behind the first ranks. Having smashed our share, and secured some bones and feathers, we choose four good looking uncracked jars, and retreat with our prizes, nearly stifled with the brown snuffy dust of these departed birds, and glad to clamber up by the perpendicular hole, through which we issue once more into fresh air and daylight.

"The veneration of the ancient Egyptians for the Ibis is said to have arisen from the great utility of the bird in ridding the country of serpents, at a period when Egypt extended itself much farther into the desert than at present; its habitable breadth being increased by artificial irrigation from huge lakes or reservoirs of

Nile water, conducted by canals at the season of the overflow. These immense works were the pride and profit of the old monarchs, conquering large sterile tracts of wilderness, and converting them into corn-fields of Egypt, by bringing the slimy water of the Nile to stagnate on their surface; but the serpents of these sandy regions were hostile and fatal to man, who, in gratitude to the birds that congregated on the new-made lakes and waged war against the snakes, invested them with a sacred character; hence the mummied Ibis, the pits we have explored, and the pots we have secured. The living bird is no longer found in Egypt, for . . . the vast lakes of the desert are now dried up, or remain only as salt natron marshes; the serpents are left undisturbed in their own domain, and the Ibis has winged its way to regions further south-the wilds of Ethiopia, where, leisurely wading in stagnant water on its long legs, and complacently gobbling writhing vipers in its long beak, it wastes no vain regret upon the loss of the priestly potting, preserving, and perfuming, that awaited the feathers of its fathers. Bruce describes a bird he frequently saw in Abyssinia, as answering in all respects to the mummied Ibis, about twenty inches in height, with a curled beak, and black and white plumage."-NOZRANI in Egypt.

LAKE MÆRIS.

"WE now approach one of the most extraordinary of all the gigantic works of the kings of old, the Lake Mæris, described by Herodotus as nearly 300 miles in circumference, and 300 feet at the greatest depth, 'made with hands and dug!' Nearly in the middle of the lake stood two pyramids, each rising 300 feet above the water, with as much below as above; and upon the summit of each was a colossal statue of marble. The water for six

months flowed into the lake from the Nile, and for six months flowed out. While it was ebbing, the king received daily a talent of silver for the fish caught; while flowing, but one-third of a talent. (A talent is equal to 2251.)

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"Herodotus describes both the lake and the labyrinth as an eye-witness, and is assuredly worthy of credit, borne out as he is by Pliny. True, the lake is now much smaller, because Egypt is fallen from its high estate; and such a gigantic work required power not only to achieve, but to maintain it; but the pride of her power has come down ;' 'her rivers are dry and her land is waste.' It is worth remark, that when the Egyptian rivers are spoken of in Scripture, irrigating canals are meant. The prophet likens Pharaoh to the Assyrian, 'whom the waters made great,' &c. Yes! the water made, and would again make, Pharaoh great; the flood of the deep Nile sets up, and the drought of the thirsty desert brings him low-water is the life of Egypt. . . "Of the labyrinth near Lake Mæris, nothing is now seen or known. The three thousand chambers,'' the tombs of the sacred crocodiles,' the halls, the pillars, and the sculpture, have left no record of their existence but in the pages of the old historian . . . however, it was but a gigantic monument of human folly and superstition; and if its memory had perished with it, we should have lost nothing but the record of 'works that were wrought, and labour that was laboured for vanity and vexation of spirit, and no profit under the sun!'"NOZRANI in Egypt.

SCRIPTURE NOTICES.

"I WILL punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods and their kings."—Jer. xlvi. 25. "I will execute judgments in No... I will cut off the multitude of No ... No shall be rent asunder."Ezek. xxx. 14-16.

"Art thou better than populous No, (or than NoAmon,) that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea? Ethiopia and Egypt were

1 "The sea referred to in this passage is the river Nile, which to the present day is named in Egypt, 'the sea,' as its most common appellation. Our Egyptian servants always called it the sea,' "-ROBINSON.