DIFFICULTIES WITH DONKEYS.

15

enabled us to get to his donkeys; which, until then, had been so far from the thickest part of the action, that we had not had a glimpse of them.

While we were mounting, he kept off the crowd with slight touches of his corbash, which he did not scruple in using pretty freely over the backs and shoulders of all who came within his reach, without much respect to persons.

Mrs. C. had no sooner mounted a donkey, than the Arab who had charge of it began to belabour the poor animal so lustily, that he got him into a run, and was pushing off at a furious rate, unbidden, into an obscure part of the city; while our friend the doctor had scarcely got easy in his saddle, before he was whipped away in another direction. I mounted last, but was sent forward in the twinkling of an eye, by a man at the heels of my donkey, who urged him onward at the top of his speed; and he consequently jogged on with such a rocking and unsteady gait, that I had great trouble in holding on; and, what was worse, the poor creature, so hardly pressed, stumbled several times, and nearly pitched me, heels over head, into the sand.

In short, we had no little difficulty in keeping right side up on the donkeys, but still more in keeping ourselves in the same company. However, after a while, we got into something like regular order, and began to wind along through the little, narrow, wet and muddy streets of the town. A scene, at once novel and indescribably singular, now presented itself. The people in crowds were creeping along, over

16

WATER-CARRIERS AND CITY-CRIERS.

their ankles in mud, generally more than half naked, and many of them had little more covering than our first parents before the fall. All of them appeared to be about as miserable as filth, cold, hunger, want, rags, and no rags at all, could make them.

Our passage was completely blocked up and overshadowed by a procession of camels loaded with lemons and oranges. Our limbs were scarcely safe from the ponderous jostlings of these unwieldy, though patient and useful animals, when we encountered a platoon of camels and donkeys loaded with goat-skins of water, which the Arabs were distributing through the streets of Alexandria, in the same retail way that "pure spring water" is dealt round from house to house in the good city of Gotham. Next came butt against us a large camel with a huge date-tree on his back, sweeping the streets, in his unsteady motion, for a considerable distance fore and aft. "Look out for heads!" Here is a knot of shivering Arabs, grinding corn in a little rude kind of mill, stuck flat in the mud, and turned by a donkey. There is a hideous-looking object, bearing on her head a loathsome substance, spread out upon a greasy board, crying, in the nerve-racking and jawbreaking language of her country, "Hot cakes! hot cakes! here's your fine hot cakes!" Now we pass a cluster of Arab women in masks, according to the custom of the country, exhibiting little more of their faces than a small space around their eyes, and painted brows, while their legs are bare to a more elevated point than is even exhibited by the fair

artistes of the ballet, at present so popular in our own enlightened country. Here, again, are a dozen young girls, with tattooed chins, gabbling like geese in the snow, with scarcely a rag to cover their nakedness; and there is a drove of slaves for sale, dragging their rattling chains through the mud.

THE HOTEL OF ALEXANDRIA.

19

CHAPTER III.

The principal Hotel in Alexandria.- Rain and Sunshine. — A Ride before Dinner. — Invitation to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Firkins.- Introduction to the Wrinklebottoms, Messrs. O'Statten, Sneezebiter, O'Screensbury, and other distinguished Personages. — Genealogy of the Humbug Family. -An Evening Circle.-A Snake Story. An agreeable Surprise.

THE principal hotel of Alexandria, kept by a Frank, and quite in the European style, we found very comfortable; and the charges not more than about twice as extravagant as those in most towns on the continent of Europe, notwithstanding bread, meat, and other articles of food are two or three hundred per cent. cheaper in Egypt than in any other part of the world that I have visited. However cheap, dear, comfortable or uncomfortable it might have appeared to others, we were glad enough to escape the dismal scenes that we had just encountered on our way from the shore, and take up our quarters in it for the time being. We had scarcely put ourselves down quietly, however, before our friend the doctor became impatient for an attack upon the "lions of the town."

The rain was descending in torrents one moment, and the sun was shining hot enough to boil it in the streets the next; nevertheless, donkeys were ordered,