for centuries remained a dead letter to mankind, having been so completely buried in the drifting sands of the desert, that nothing, save the head of one colossal statue, was left uncovered to excite the surmise and curiosity of Nile voyagers.

...

"You can conceive nothing more singular and impressive than the façade of the great temple of Isamboul. Cut into the solid rock, this temple is not a structure, but an excavation . . . A large door-way is guarded on either side by two colossal statues seated, the dimensions of which I shall leave you to judge of by telling you, that when I had scrambled up the precipitous sandbank to the entrance of the temple, (which on the north side is still half buried in bright yellow sand,) I sat down to take breath under the vast shadow of the last of these colossi, whose head is all that now remains above ground; and where, think you, did I shelter myself?—In its ear!—which afforded me a cool and commodious niche.

...

"As the numerous chambers of the temple are excavated in the rock, into which they penetrate one after the other, the first one alone receives light from without. ... The temple is dedicated to Osiris, or Ammon Re, the Jupiter of the ancient Egyptians, but the embellishments are all in honour of Rhamses the Great, during whose reign the fane of Isamboul was probably excavated and adorned. The walls are covered with the most spirited sculptured representations of that great monarch's war against, and conquest of, some Asiatic nation; the figures are as large as life . . .

"The entrance of our torchbearers disturbed a colony of bats settled in the deserted chambers... We had reason to know that the temple of Isamboul is the abode of serpents also, for in the corner of one of the dark lateral chambers, we found the skin cast by one of those reptiles there, unbroken, and looking like a silver network upon the finest gauze. . .

"Now then I have, for the first time, been enabled

to form a distinct idea of the interior disposition of an Egyptian temple in all its parts; and if what I have just beheld has appeared to me imposing, almost overpoweringly grand, in its actual state of ruin and desolation, how must it have shown when the shrine still contained its idols,-when those vast portals, thrown open, revealed to the wondering eyes of the multitude

INTERIOR OF TEMPLE OF ISAM BOUL.

the interior of the rude rock, cut into chambers of beauty, and glimpses of pictured walls, and processions of priests and princes, and gigantic forms looking down. from their stony pedestals; and the Holy of Holies, the dark sanctuary, with its sculptured gods, wrapped in solemn gloom beyond, indistinct and fearful as the mysterious rites enacted there, which filled their votaries' breasts with trembling awe! And, now, what has succeeded to all that pomp? Where the deities were enshrined, the bat has made its foul nest; and where the

A A

priests of Ammon enrobed themselves, there the serpent casts its skin! Oh, vanity of vanities! Could the seer's prophetic eye have penetrated so far into futurity as to behold the actual desolation of Egypt's proud fanes, what a subject would they have furnished for that saddening text of the preacher-'ALL IS VANITY!””— Temples and Tombs of Egypt.

"Stopped opposite the village of Farras; we here examined the site of a large Nubian city, and amongst the modern stone buildings of the Arabs, found several remnants of temples, with hieroglyphics... Near the village are some fragments of temples, consisting of several broken pieces of red granite pillars; also some small ones of beautiful white marble. From the appearance of these ruins, the fineness of the situation, and the rich plain of cultivated land near it, I think this must once have been a populous and flourishing city.

"From the number of temples, and from the fine plains of loamy soil, now generally covered with a surface of sand a foot thick, there is reason to suppose that this country was once both populous and flourishing."— IRBY and MANGLES.

CHAPTER X.

RED SEA, AND WILDERNESS OF SINAI.

RED SEA. Western Gulf Suez-Passage of the Red Sea-Wells of Moses-Marah-Elim-Encampment of the Israelites by the Red Sea -Feirán, perhaps Paran-Mount Serbal-Plain of Er-Rahah-Mount Sinai-Hazeroth-Life in the Desert-Encampment in the Valley near Mount Hor.

EASTERN GULF.-Eziongaber-Elath-Akaba-Island of Graia.

"AND the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt."-Exodus x. 19.

"But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea and the children of Israel went up harnessed' out of the land of Egypt."Exodus xiii. 18.

The Red Sea, which separates Arabia from Egypt and Ethiopia, is so called from the land of Edom, or 1 By five in a rank. (Marg.)