made money enough to buy fifty camels, one hundred Guinea slaves, a few Mograbian dancing-girls, and a goodly quantity of cotton, coffee, and other merchandize of the country, and joining another caravan, off we started across the desert, to the seaport of Suez, at the north end of the Red Sea. By the by, what a pity it is that the Egyptians do not cut a canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. It is a dead level all the way;-not a lock necessary. Bob and I sent in proposals to the governor, to construct one within two years; but his higness shook his head, and said that if Allah had intended that there should be a water-communication from Suez to the Levant, he would have made it himself. But of that in another place. I intend to apply to our legislature for an act of incorporation for a railroad. Keep it quiet, boys. Say nothing.

Our

"Our arrival at Suez created no little excitement. fame had preceded us across the desert, and the swarthy disciples of the Prophet of the east, grinned upon us, and fed us and felt us, just as would the very Christian populace of New York grin at, and feed, and feel King Blackhawk, and the Prophet of the west. It was soon, however, our fortune to be monopolized by good society. The sister of the governor, Julia Kleokatrinka, a widow, got us. She was the lady B of the place, and a most magnificent woman she was. She was decidedly the best dressed lady that I have seen in all my travels. Beautiful, witty, learned, accomplished, and, above all, so generous in every respect. It was on account of her peculiar excellences, that she had obtained a special license to be different in deportment and behavior, from all the other ladies of rank in Suez, and to expose herself to the gaze of men, and give entertainments, and all that sort of thing. All the other

women of Suez are strictly guarded in their seraglios, as they should be. I took to her exceedingly. She loved and petted me so, I could'nt help it. She used to call me her‘hi ghi giaour,' which means, boys, pet infidel poet. Her conversaziones were delightful. She had around her, constantly, a brilliant coterie, of poets and romancers. One day, I met at her palace, at dinner, a cordon composed of Almanzor, the geometrician; Allittle, the poet; Ali Kroker, the satirist; Ali Gator, the magnificent son of Julia-the Suez Pelham; Selim Israel, a writer of books which no body would read; a Mr. Smith, an Englishman; a Persian mufti; an Iceland count; a Patagonian priest, and several other persons of dis tinguished merit and virtue. The divine Julia never looked so well. She was dressed in Turkish pantaletts, made of the ever-changing plumage of the throat feathers of the African nightingale, woven and embroidered into a thin cloth of silver. Over these she wore a chemise of pea-green Persian silk, which hung loosely from the extreme tip of her alabaster shoulders, and fell just below her knees. The rest of her simple drapery consisted of a Tibetian shawl, which she gracefully disposed about her person, so as to answer the purpose of robe, or stole, or cloak, as her coquettish caprice might desire. Around her neck sported a young tame boa constrictor, and in her lap slumbered a Siberian puppydog, which was presented to her by the emperor of Russia. Her conversation was uncommonly piquant. I was in capital spirits.

"Will you be so generously disinterested,' said the charming Julia,' as to eschew chewing until you can hand me that salt ?'

"Most unequivocally, bright moon of my soul,' I readily re

plied; · Allah forbid, that through my neglect, a lady's meat should go unsalted.'

"Then we all had a hearty laugh. I turned to Ali Gator, who was leaning against a pile of scarlet satin ottomans, while the rays of the setting sun fell full upon his beautifully embroidered waistcoat,

"Stop, Ned, stop," said I, looking around, and listening to the chorus of heavy breathings that had, for some time past, been swelling upon my ear. "Raynor-softly-Dan-loud

er

Peter-with vehemence· Smith-Oliver-Zoph:- -You have, by gad; you've put them all to sleep. I'm glad of it. It serves you right. Of what interest is it to these people to know what twaddle was talked at Julia Kleokatrinka's dinnertable? And what right have you to betray the privacies of a hospitable board, into which you may have been, perhaps unworthily, adopted. Shame! shame! It is a just judgment upon you."

"It only shows their want of taste," replied Ned, coolly.

Bring up your camels!" sung out Venus, as he turned over on his side in an uneasy dream about the last thing he heard before he went to sleep.

"So I say," I continued.

Let's

"Bring up your camels!" "Get out of the city, Ned, some how or other. If you can't do better, take a balloon. wake the boys up, and then do you travel on. Bring up your camels! Bring up your camels!"

I roared this out so loud, as to bring every man upon his feet. "I was asleep," said Raynor, looking as though he wanted to make an apology.

"Some pork will boil that way," philosophized the Hicksite. "I was dreaming of the my-grab-somethen-dancen-gals. What did you do with 'em, Mr. Locus," asked Venus, rubbing "Were they pretty? I should like to try 'em on

his eyes.

the double-shuffle, heel-and-toe, a small touch. Hey!"

"I'm done," said Ned, sulkily, crossing his arms.

Go it!

"No, no; not by some thousands of miles," cried I. "We've got to get to the Lanjan Empire yet."-I knew Ned wanted to spin it out.

"It's my 'pinion he'll never reach there to-night," yawned Long John. "The wind don't seem to suit, no haaw. What's

your sentiments, Peter ?"

"I have my

doubts."

CHAPTER

VII.

"If any man woulde blame me, eyther for takynge such a matter in hande, or els for writing it in the Englysh tongue, this answer I maye make hym, that what the best of the realine thinke it honeste for them to use, I, one of the meanest sorte, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write; and though to have written it in an other tonge, had bene both more profitable for my study, and also more honest for my name, yet I can thinke my labor wel bestowed, yf wt a litle hynderaunce of my profyt and name, may come any fourtherance to the pleasure or commoditie of the gentlemen and yeomen of England, for whose sake I took this matter in hande." ROGER ASCHAM.

EVEN thus, apologised the venerable preceptor of England's virgin queen, when he gave to "all gentlemen and yeomen of England, pleasaunte for theyr pastyme to rede, and profitable for theyr use to folow," that precious birth of "Toxophilus, the schole of shootinge conteyned in two bookes." Glorious old Roger! my master-my father-my friend-my patron saint! Thy pupil and worshipper is redeemed from the guilt of idlenesse and levitie," by the gracious authority of thy

precept and example. Roger, be with me! Rogere, ut mihi faveas, adjutorque sis, rogo, obsecro !

On the evening succeeding the night when Ned's travels met with the ignominious punctuation which has been set forth in the foregoing chapter, we were all assembled around the cheerful fire, relating our sports and various adventures of the day. Ned was in good humor with himself and every body else, for his sport had been eminently triumphant. Oliver and I had killed only some twenty coot, and a beach fox; while he and one of the boys brought in fifty-four brant, seven geese, five widgeons, three oldwives, a cormorant, and a white owl. Ned gave us a full account of his captivity and sufferings among the Pawnee Picks, and Daniel rehearsed, with much grace and unction, his yarns about pirates Halstead, Conklin, and Jones. Fatigue and sleep at last succeeded in making us yawn, and as I had engaged Bill Luff to go with me to "the middle ground" next morning, early, to lie in a battery, I proposed that we should "shut up shop," and go to bed.

"Won't the tide sarve for Mr. Locus to reach to the Lanjan Empire to-night?" asked Long John of me, stretching out his immense isthmus of neck, and putting on a most ludicrously quizzical character of phiz. "I reckon 'ts high water naaw, and his ship can scratch over the bars, likely, 'bout this time."

"It's my 'pinion he rather smashed her last night," said Dan; "I shouldn't be 'sprised if Mr. Cypress was to say he sce small piece o' th' wrack himself."

"Let him keel her up and get the water out o' her, and set her afloat agen."

"It's no use. She's got a smart hole into her, and she's pretty much water-logged, I sh'd say."

"Let 'im take out some th' cargo, and she'll go. He'd only