​lishment of a monarchical government as a neighbor, whose acts will not tend to the benefit of the republic.

If there should still be no treaty, the efforts to maintain the commercial life of the kingdom may take up the suggestion of annexation to our government. They have need of all the benefits which the

treaty could confer to sustain themselves. A union with these states will not only confer all those benefits, but will insure a tendency to a complete civilization of the native people. That is the only treaty concerning which, as merchants, diplomatists and civilizers, we should hold any argument.

DOS REALES.

HE had to have a name, of course. So one day when he met us on the Mole and I had given him a quarter of a dollar by mistake for a copper "dump" or two-cent piece, and he had hurried off, throwing glances of trepidation behind him every now and then as he ran up the wharf lest I should overhaul him and demand return of change, I called him "Dos Reales." And always after that he seemed to know the name.

But that was a long while ago. Years before the Spanish fleet knocked the

lower town to pieces. Dos Reales must be getting on in years by this time, even if he still lives.

He was a large dog, of no particular breed, and of the color of a ripe horsechestnut. A dog of no vices. He scorned to run in debt, always paying cash down for what h® ate, and lodging no one knew where. I have'nt the slightest doubt, however, that he paid for bed as well as board. A very Beau Hickmann of a dog. Courteous, affable, self-possessed, never seeking an acquaintance but always glad to meet any friend of a friend of his, always opening his mouth for money when any one whom he knew came near him. Bones and garbage he left to the plebeians of his race. I have often seen him turn up his nose with quiet contempt at ordinary pups squabbling for refuse edibles, as he, having

dined well, lay at full length in the sun with an air of lazily smoking his afterdinner cigar.

No one knew where he came from. Dr. Reid, the wholesale druggist, whose shop is in Cochrane or Commercial street, I forget which—at any rate it isn't far from the Custom House which stands or did stand, before Admiral Nunez shelled it, right across the way from the gate of the Mole—and you turned to the right from the Custom House to go there—Dr. Reid, who knew more about the town than any other American in it, told me that he believed Dos Reales was left on shore by some merchantship's boat when quite a little puppy, and that when he found himself thrown upon his own resources, as you may Say, he organized and adopted his own method of support in life.

It seemed to me that the dog deserved a good deal of credit for this. In fact, every one gave it to him.

He would stand on the upper step of the long flight of landing stairs, watching our boat as it came from the ship. He knew the flag perfectly well, and would bark a hoarse and gruff "good morning!" as the officer in charge called out "way enough! trail oars!" and the coxswain steered her in towards the stairs, and the men let their oars swim loose in the beckets that hung alongside, and threw over the little fenders of ​stuffed leather that looked like biscuits over-done, and the bow and stroke-oar, each armed with a boat hook, made desperate dives at piles and stairs to check her headway.

The gruffness was all put on, however. He would come up to us as we landed, laying his big, honest head in the hand of one and giving his paw to another, while he winked at a third and wagged his tail vociferously as the last one out of the boat came over the cap-sill. Then he would draw back from the group, sit down, open his mouth and look a request for money. Usually each of us gave him a "dump." He would close his teeth on the coin, wave a goodbye with his tail, and walk away to the town.

He patronised two butchers, a baker, and two cafés. At the butcher's he bought beef or mutton. He never ate pork. He always selected some choice cut, with plenty of juice and not too much bone in it. He liked a little bone for medico-chemical reasons probably. From the butcher's he would go to the baker's or one of the cafés, and purchase either plain bread or sweet cake, either or both as his taste or his means dictated, and then he would lie down in some quiet corner and eat his breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, like a christian.

I wanted to tell you about his habits and peculiarities first, you know, so that you might feel acquainted with him.

We were all going to dine at Henry Caldwell's one night just after we arrived. Henry was a good-hearted, whole-souled fellow, who liked nothing better than to have his friends come to see him. He was a lumber merchant. His partner, Don Somebody-or-other, I forget his name, lived away down in the Patagonian woods, near the German city of Port Montt, where he cut lumber and sent it up to Valparaiso, and Henry attended there to its sale.

Caldwell's home was a snug little house on Concepcion Hill, right up in

the air three hundred feet above the lower town, and not half that distance back from where Cochrane street would have been had its location marked the summit instead of the base-line of the precipitous front of the hill. A zig-zag path, for mules and foot-travelers only, ran up the face of the bluff.

David Page and I were the only officers going from the ship that evening. Harry Finn, once on the stage in Boston, (you remember his father, the great comedian, dead long ago, a man of immense dramatic genius in his day and generation) was at that time in commercial business in Valparaiso, and three Chilean gentlemen were to complete the party. Henry Caldwell's cosy little dinners were perfection, and Page and I were anticipating a delightful evening.

"Don Ricardo isn't well enough to come to-night," said Henry.

He and David and I were walking slowly up the zig-zag path. "He's quite sick, in fact. Almost dangerously so, his clerk told me this afternoon."

I was very sorry. Don Ricardo was a civil engineer, at that time engaged in some way on the Valparaiso and Santiago railroad. He was most agreeable company, speaking English perfectly, and appreciating fully, which is one of the hardest things that a foreigner can do, all the points of a joke in our language. I was sorry we should'nt see him, and very sorry to hear of his illness.

Dinner went off very well. Mrs. Caldwell always handled her table and her guests in the most pleasantly efficient manner possible. Every one was naturally a little subdued at first by the Don's absence and its cause, but as the wine went round we grew more like ourselves; and when our coffee had been poured and our cigars lighted, and Peta, the pretty table-girl, had made everything about the table snug and comfortable for a long sitting, we talked of ​

people and things and felt certain Don Ricardo would be better by morning.

Perhaps he was.

There came a knock at the door, and one entered whose face was a face of sorrow and mourning.

Don Ricardo was dead.

Burials are such sad _ necessities! Why isn't the old classical incremation better? A retort to hold the body; a furnace to reduce it to ashes; an urn to hold the dust. I doubt if the daily, sickening thought that the hands which were ever devotedly ours for every need and tender care, the eyes that read love in return in our own, the lips that kissed us into life and light, are going back to their dust in slow and loathsome and crawling decay and corruption, is as pleasant as it might be. Still, tastes differ. Burials may be more christianlike. It doesn't seem so to me—that's all.

Sincere mourners carried Don Ricardo's body to its grave.

And when we came back to Caldwell's and sat there at the open windows in his little parlor, and talked about the dead man, wondering what friends or relatives he had in his old home somewhere up near Santiago, wondering what they would say when they heard of his death, we grew very melancholy. We were all away from home, too. Very far away. All with stout hearts. All with good courage. But what befell Don Ricardo might come to us, would in all certainty reach us somewhere. Perhaps while we were still strangers in a strange land.

Page and I said "Good-night" to Mrs. Caldwell, and started to go down town.

"T'll go with you," said Henry. "I can't sleep just yet. And Lizzie, why don't you go to bed, child? You're tired out, youknow. Ill be back soon."

The night was perfect. Stilland cool. The moon was nearly full.

At our feet, so far below us that the

houses and ships were tuys in size, lay the crescent of the lower town traced in triple lines of gas-light from the three business streets: lay the bay of silver undulating in slow magnificence as the ground-swell came in with the first of the flood.

At our left was the hill of the "MainTop," looking by day like a gigantic leprous abscess ready for the knife; reeking both by night and day in its dens of misery and disease with more than the leper's foulness; a thing of beauty in the moonlight now.

Behind us, peak above peak, rising in snowy splendor till their king, Aconcagua, 23,000 feet above the sea, carried earth in unearthly grandeur to heaven, reigned the Andes of Chile.

And the Southern Cross shone out. Dimmed in glory by the moon, yet still radiant with the everlasting light that its stars gave forth ages before the world was, it hung in the midnight sky just over the churchyard where Don Ricardo slept, and pointed upward to God.

"Let's go round to his quarters a moment," said Henry. "The outer door was left unlocked this afternoon, and somebody may take a notion to steal something. You'll have plenty of time to reach the Mole."

Our boat had orders that night to wait till we came, and as the house where the Don had lived wasn't much out of our way, we went.

There's a sort of irregular, threecornered plaza in the lower town. I don't remember its name. Perhaps it has none. Four or five streets make it in uniting and crossing each other. It's the only open space in the city of that especial shape, however, and is near Cochrane street. There is a long twostory building on one side of it, that has a balcony or open veranda running the entire length of its front, on a level with the floor of the second story. Its projecting width is some seven feet, about that of the sidewalk belowit. At ​

each end a stairway, set against the wall, goes from the sidewalk to the balcony. These stairways are about four feet wide, and are set sloping towards each other. Nearer each other at the top, I mean, than they are at the bottom. Convergent. One word would have told what two sentences didn't. The ground floor is cut up into eight or ten retail shops, each one the width of an ordinary house-lot here in San Francisco, and forty or forty-five feet deep. The second story has as many suites of rooms as there are shops below. There are three rooms in each suite; the front one lighted from the balcony, the second and third by windows in the roof. These rooms communicate with the balcony only, each suite being isolated from its neighbor, and the only way to reach them from the street is by the outside Stairways and the veranda. Just remember how this is, so that you can understand what I tell you.

We walked slowly along and stopped on our way at the English club house to get some brandy and cigars. We hadn't felt like either drinking or smoking before during the evening, but the mental and physical fatigue of the day began to tell. We talked with the manager, Whip, (I wonder whether he's still in existence, what he did in the bombardment, and whether he'll remember me when he sees this) lighted our cigars at one of the tiny braseros of burning charcoal that stood on the bar, came out into the moonlight and walked on towards the plaza.

We came into the plaza in such a direction that the house where Don Ricardo had lived was directly before us. To reach either of the stairways leading to the balcony it was necessary to make a detour either to the right or left. The moonlight fell squarely on the face of the building, but just as we entered the open space a cloud dimmed and almost quenched it. The stairs on the left were a little nearer to us than the others,

(we had come down on the left-hand side of the street from Cochrane) so turning that way, Caldwell leading, we traversed one side of the triangle and began to go up the stairway. Caldwell first, I next, and Page last.

Henry's head was just above the level of the floor of the balcony, when he stopped and looked intently forward. I was two or three stairs below him and stopped when he did. He looked ahead, put his left hand back with a gesture of warning, and then said, without turning round, speaking in a hoarse whisper, "or heaven's sake, doctor, look!"

I passed up by his side. Page followed. We three stood together on the same step of the stairway.

The moon shone out with renewed brilliancy, and there, leaning against a stanchion of the veranda rail not a dozen yards from us, and looking down into the plaza, dressed in his old-time wear, standing in his old familiar attitude, was Don Ricardo! Dead—buried fathom deep in red clay—and here!

As we stood the figure turned. The moonlight fell across its face, showing it white and ghastly and still. Then with slow and noiseless steps it entered the open door of Don Ricardo's quarters.

The little plaza was silent. From a distance came the sound of the foot-fall of some vigilante walking his beat, the bark of vagrant dogs, the deadened roar of the surf on the beach of the bay.

We looked at each other, turned, went down the stairs, then took counsel.

Regarding the right of a man, alive or dead, to enter his lodgings, there can be no doubt. The question is one of ability merely. To the best of our knowledge in the case of the Don, this ability had no existence.

Caldwell went along the sidewalk to the right hand stairway. Page took up a position in the road that enabled him to command a view of the veranda from end to end, and I began to re-ascend the stairs on the left. Henry and I reached ​

the veranda at the same time and walked towards each other and the door where the figure had disappeared.

The front room was vacant of everything but its ordinary furniture. The chairs stood in their usual places. Books, instruments and papers lay undisturbed on the large table in the centre of the floor. Caldwell lighted a match and with it the standing gas-light on the table. Every portion of the room was visible then, and no living beings were in it but ourselves. Walking out on the balcony I called to Page and he came up.

The door of the middle room was closed but not locked. We opened it and went in.

Don Ricardo had used this second room fora work-place. Drawing-boards, surveying implements, and two or three chairs were its only contents.

The back room door was shut. Lighting the gas in the working room we opened it cautiously.

A draft of air blew towards us and

the gas-jet in the second room fluttered

and flapped and nearly went out. Closing the door quickly, Caldwell scraped a match on the heel of his boot and ignited the gas at the bracket on the wall at the head of the bed.

The sky-light was open. Left so by the undertaker's attendants to ventilate the room, about which the odor of chlorine still lingered from the disinfecting agents used after the Don's death. The blank wall checked our further progress.

The bed was stripped. We looked below it. We looked in the movable closet or wardrobe standing on the right. We opened the drawers of the bureau on the other side of the room. We made a variety of absurd investigations into every nook and corner—and found nothing.

Page sat down and lighted a fresh cigar, offering one to Caldwell at the same time and another to me. The smell of chlorine was unpleasant and we joined him in smoking, Thus far our

search to understand the mystery ended in nothing more tangible. Ended in smoke.

Sailors are almost always superstitious. I have been one myself and I know of what I speak. Things come to men who go down to the sea in ships and do business in the great waters that landsmen never dream of. Old shellbacks believe in marvellous happenings because they must. Wouldn't the testimony of a dozen witnesses, men of truth and honor, combining to tell how each and every one of them had seen me kill you or you kill me, send me or you to the gallows? Very good. I can bring you the attested oaths of a thousand men who have seen that embodiment of the terrible, the Shrouded Demon of the Sea; who have found themselves working away up and out on a yard-arm in some night of storm and darkness, sideby-side with something that wore the form and features of a shipmate dead, sewed in his hammock and launched overboard days before, with a thirty-two pound shot at his heels; who have seen a ship with everything set, manned by no mortal men, drive straight into the teeth of a gale and vanish, shadowy masts and spars going over the side of a ghostly hull, which rose and plunged and sunk, while groans and shrieks of men and women came over the surging sea to the ears of the horrified witnesses, and have had this drama of death three times repeated in their sight in an hour. Superstition is hardly the term to apply to this sort of thing. It's simply a belief in facts as patent to the eyes of those who see them as are the ordinary scenes of a city to a lounger in its streets. What's the use of saying they can't be, when they ere?

So two of us being of the sea, we sat, and smoked, and talked, of this apparition. If one of us only had seen it, the others might have doubted its reality, and attributed the whole thing to the fumes of Mr. Whip's strong water acting ​

on a system wearied with the toil of the day. But it had been seen by all three. And, as if to confirm its reality, the portrait of the Don, hanging on the wall directly beneath the skylight, parted its fastenings suddenly, as if unseen hands had cut the cord, and fell on the floor with a crash that shivered its heavy frame and tore the canvas from its stretcher. Fell at our feet—and the painted face, rent from forehead to chin, looked up mournfully at us from the ruin.

"Let's get out of this," said Page. "I'm going aboard ship."

He threw his half-smoked cigar away, and went through the other rooms to the balcony. I saw no reason for remaining, and went out after him. Caldwell turned off the gas in each room as he left it, and followed us.

We stopped at Whip's again on our way to the Mole. I have great doubt of either the need or benefit of brandy under ordinary circumstances. But

there's probably no fact more firmly established than the one of there always being some especial reason why a drink

should be taken. We had taken our first one that night to revive us. Page suggested the second to quiet our nerves; and Page being then and now aman using but little stimulant, a suggestion of this sort from him carrying weight, in consequence, and meaning something, we agreed to it.

Two or three men had come into the club-house since our first call, and when we went up stairs the second time we heard them talking and laughing out in the moonlight, through the open door at the end of the central hall. There was a balcony there that overhung the water.

Caldwell recognized their voices, and asked Whip to send our brandy out there after us.

Page knew one of the party, an old Scotchman, named McLerie, and Henry was evidently well known to all of them. They made room for us at the table

where they were sitting. Presently the servant in attendance at the bar brought out our decanter and glasses, and we all drank together.

" What's the matter with you three?" said McLerie. "Caldwell there looks as if he had seen a ghost. What has happened?"

Then Page told him about what we had seen on the balcony, and how we looked through the rooms and found nothing, and wanted to know what he thought of it.

"Well," said McLerie, after a pause of a few minutes, during which he emptied his glass and lighted a fresh cigar, "I think that whoever or whatever it was you saw, went out of the third room, through the open skylight. I don't believe there was anything unreal about the affair. You were all thinking of the Don; there was somebody standing at his door. The moonlight is uncertain at best. I haven't the slightest doubt about there being a man there, but I am perfectly sure that it was a man, and no ghost. That's my idea. Page and the doctor know very well how easily an active man might mount on the bureau, cling to projections here and there in the wall of the room, and be out on the roof in less time than it took you to get there from the front door. I don't believe in supernatural agency when I can account for a thing by ordinary rules."

We sat there and talked the matter over for a long time. As usual, each one of the party had his own theory to advance and his own illustrations to tell. Whip was a remarkably patient man with good customers, the summer night was short, and the bay below us began to reflect the first faint approach of sunrise before our conversation ended. We had forgotten all about our boat. Caldwell had unwittingly far overstayed his promised time for returning home. But we knew our men didn't care, and we trusted that the captain would find but little fault when he heard our rea ​sons for delay, and Henry's wife had undoubtedly gone to bed to sleep quietly till he came. She was a very sensible woman.

So we all got under way for the Mole. Caldwell and our new friends insisted on going down to see us safely off for the ship. Our boat lay bumping gently every now and then against the lower stair of the landing. There was one man in her, fast asleep. Page woke him up, and started him off after the rest of the crew. We all sat down on the long bench that runs along inside the railing on the cap-sill of the pier, and waited for the crew to come.

Dos Reales had preferred camping out that night to retiring to his usual lodging-house, wherever that might be. So we judged, at least, for after the sound of several prolonged yawns, and a variety of scratchings and slippings of claws on the wooden floor of the wharf, had come to us from a little distance, he made his appearance, walking sleepily towards us, through the morning twilight. He rubbed a "good morning" against each one of us, and then sat down and opened his mouth for money for his breakfast.

" You're too early, old fellow," said I; "there are no shops open yet. Lie down, sir!"

After waiting a while, and looking wonderingly at the absence of his usual remittances, he appeared to think so too, and curled himself up at my feet to resume his interrupted slumbers.

The coming daylight came nearer. The lanterns on the Mole began to grow dim, and the chilly land breeze from the mountains to lessen in strength.

There was a steady footstep coming down the pier from the entrance gate.

"There comes the coxswain," said Page. "The crew are close behind him. Let's get into the boat."

We were shaking hands with our shore friends, and saying "good bye," when Caldwell exclaimed: "McLerie!

87 Look there!" We turned and looked up the Mole.

The steady footsteps had ceased, but a figure stood about a dozen yards from us, shadowy and vague in the dim light, wearing the features and dress of the dead Don Ricardo—stood in his old familiar attitude, looking far out seaward, unconscious, apparently, of us or of anything else of earth.

McLerie shrank back.

"What do you think xow?" whispered Page.

McLerie braced himself as if against some physica! shock, waited a moment, and then exclaiming, "Man or ghost, I'll make it speak!" he started with a firm step towards the figure.

But Dos Reales was too quick for him. With a bark of joyful greeting he sprang up and ran towards the apparition, satisfied that he had at last found some one who would give him what he wanted. After his usual manner, he sat down close to the figure, and opened his mouth for the expected coins.

The apparition burst into a loud laugh.

It was a twin-brother of Don Ricardo's. The affair of the night before had been impromptu on his part. He had seen our heads above the upper step of the balcony stairs, suspected what we thought, and resolved to carry out the delusion by doing exactly what McLerie surmised he had done—climbing rapidly out on the roof through the open skylight, and dislodging, or rather loosening, the nail that sustained the picture, as it gave him a momentary stand-point in his ascent.. This morning he had merely walked out for fresh air. At the gate of the Mole he had heard our voices, and supposed them to be those of boatmen. Coming nearer, he had recognized us, and resolved to maintain the illusion of the balcony of the night before; but Dos Reales interfered.

The affair didn't lessen either Page's belief or mine in ghosts, however. ​

TO the student of archeology Egypt is perhaps the most interesting country in the world. Its recorded history dates back almost to the genesis of therace. Its hieroglyphics rehearse the annals of a mighty empire that flourished two thousand years before the Star of Bethlehem had arisen. When Syria was a waste, and Greece slept the sleep of barbarism, the Nile reflected the splendors of a civilization hardly inferior to our own. Long before Plato dreamed, or Homer sang, the Priests of Isis unveiled the mysteries of science, and told the story of the immortality of the soul. Before the Parthenon was conceived, before the temple of Solomon was reared, the sculptors and painters of Thebes and Beni Hassan had taught the rudiments of plastic art.

No other country has such a wealth

of ruins. The traveler is overwhelmed by their number and magnitude. The Pyramids of Gezeh are only types of a vast system of colossal remains stretching from Alexandria to Wady Halfa. The banks of the river are literally strewn for hundreds of miles with the debris of the civilization of the Pharaohs. The sides of the mountains are honeycombed with tombs; forests of obelisks glitter in the mellow sunlight; calm-eyed sphynxes greet the wanderer from a hundred storied sites; broken arches and crumbling columns crown innumerable eminences on the river's shores. Ruins everywhere: at every curve and bend of the Nile; on every plain and rocky height; on the Delta and the desert; from the shores of the sounding sea to the cataracts. The spirit of the dead past haunts the mysterious river. It carries us back to the infancy of man. We are brought face to face with the people who built the Pyramids—who

founded Thebes and Memphis. We walk the sacred corridors of the temples of the Pharaohs; we visit the burial places of extinct races; we behold the products of their genius, the very implements with which they wrought.

Philz is beautiful; Memphis is sadly picturesque; Dendra is a memory to cling to the soul forever; the grottoes of Beni Hassan well repay the toils of travel; the Pyramids are at once sublime and awe-inspiring; but the crowning glory of Egypt is Thebes. Shall I ever forget the eight days spent among its ruins? The approach to it coming up the Nile is one of the most striking in the East. The valley widens, the desert recedes, the mountains form themselves into a mighty amphitheatre opening toward the north. As we near the site of the "hundred-gated" city, the majestic propylon of the Temple of Karnak is darkly outlined against the sky. Nearer still, and groups of sphynxes appear through a grove of palms. A slight bend of the river, and Luxor with its obelisks, and columns, and statues of gods, and ruined temples, bursts upon the view. To the right are seen the Vocal Memnon, the palace and temples of the Pharaohs; while on every side, for miles and miles, stretches the broad plain that enshrines the dust of Thebes. We leave our Nile boat, and under the escort of an army of donkey-boys, pay a hurried visit to the Temple of Luxor. Time has cruelly played the vandal with it. Of all the grandeur of the once glorious edifice only a few pillars and scarred walls remain. Near by stands a solitary obelisk, its brother having been sacrilegiously carried off to adorn a European capital. At the entrance of the temple are a couple of colossal statues of Kamases the Second—broad-breasted fellows, meas ​

1868.]

uring some ten feet from shoulder to shoulder. They are buried up to the bosom in sand, and the scars of over thirty centuries are written on their stony brows. Passing through the propylon, with its massive walls completely covered with hieroglyphics, we enter the portico with its fourteen lofty pillars looking down on heaps of ruins and Arab huts. Scattered about are several statues of cat-headed deities, fragments of walls and columns, and the remains of the body of the temple. Luxor was the fourth in size of the temples of Thebes, and was probably connected by an avenue of sphynxes with the temple of Karnac, two miles distant.

From Luxor to the Tombs of the Kings. A sailacross the river, we land on the western shore, under the shadow of the Memnonium in the gray of the early dawn. We are in our saddles before sunrise, and canter briskly, donkey-back, under the inspiration of the cool morning air. For some two miles we pass over a level and fertile plain, the supposed site of the western section of the great city. Then we come upon a barren waste thickly strewn with mummy-pits, which continue to the base of the mountain, running parallel with the river. Here we enter a deep and narrow defile, surrounded by high and overhanging cliffs of calcareous rock. The road is narrow, and frequently interrupted by immense boulders. Nothing can exceed the barrenness of the scenery. Not a speck of green—not a blade of grass, or shrub, or wild flower relieves the dreary waste. After traversing this road for five or six miles—the same road over which a long line of Pharaohs were borne to their last abode—we enter a secluded valley in the mountains—a veritable "Valley of Death." Our guide suddenly pauses, and gives the signal to dismount. At first we can discern nothing, but a closer scrutiny reveals a small excavation in the side of the hill. This we enter, and in ten seconds find ourselves

in the tomb of one of the earliest and greatest of the Pharaohs—that discovered by Belzoni. Our guide lights his torches, and we grope our way down a flight of steps, with a perpendicular descent of twenty-four feet to the first landing. The great tomb is three hundred and twenty feet long, with a perpendicular depth of one hundred and eighty feet. It contains fourteen chambers, all inscribed with hieroglyphics and sculptures. The entrance hall is twentyseven feet long and twenty feet broad, richly decorated with images of gods and goddesses, and sacred fish, and birds, and reptiles. It opens into another chamber twenty-eight by twenty-five feet, with figures in outline looking as fresh and vivid as if executed but yesterday. The touch of the painter's brush, the mark of the sculptor's chisel, are still there. Another long descent—a magnificent corridor—another long staircase, and we are ushered into an apartment twenty-four by thirteen feet. Here, as in the preceding one, the walls and ceilings are covered with paintings and sculpture—the colors growing brighter and fresher as we advance. The artist inducts us to the mysteries of the nether world. Now the deceased king is ushered into the presence of Osiris, the "judge of the dead;"" now immense serpents, with human legs and celestial crowns on their heads, are receiving the homage of devoted worshippers; now troops of genii are flitting about the Elysian abodes; now owl and cat, and hawk and crocodile, and ape-headed gods are sitting in all the dignity of fullfledged divinities. Farther onstill, and we come to a hall twenty-seven by twenty-six feet, supported by two rows of pillars terminated by a large saloon with vaulted roof. This latter is thirty-two feet in length by twenty-seven feet in breadth, from which open several other chambers. In the centre of the great saloon Belzoni found the beautiful Sarcophagus of King Osiris. And ​this im mense tomb, which it takes hours to explore, was wrought out of the solid rock.

I cannot pause to give the details of the wonderful sculptures and still more wonderful paintings of this tomb. In one of the rooms is a representation of four different peoples contrasting widely in dress and color and cast of countenance. These are supposed to represent the great divisions of mankind, among them the negro. So little has the latter changed during a period of over 3,000 years, that an "American citizen of African descent" might recognize his portrait among the figures of this group. What, then, becomes of the pretty theory of those ethnologists who insist that the difference in color and feature between the white and blackis referable to the influence of time and climate? If the lapse of over 3,200 years (for the occupant of this tomb ascended the throne 1,385 years before Christ) has sufficed to effect no perceptible physical difference in the Ethiop, surely the remaining less than 3,000 years of man's biblically-recorded history cannot have produced so great disparity between white and black. One of the chambers of the great tomb is unfinished. The positions of the figures are given by the artist, but the coloring is not put on. What great event—what sudden calamity—prevented the completion of the task? You have entered the studio of an artist during his temporary absence from his work. Half-finished sketches are lying about; rough designs are scattered hither and thither; the paint is hardly dry upon the canvas at which he wrought; a multitude of outlines and shadows—of faintly dawning perspective and sombre background are visible. So here: the artist seems to have just left his work. Profiles of gods and goddesses—sketches of kings, and apes, and owls, and hawks, and genii, are seen on walls and ceilings. You cannot realize that these profiles

were drawn—that these _half-filled sketches were executed —that these brilliantly tinted figures were wrought, over thirty centuries ago.

The next tomb we visit—that of Rameses the Third (called the "Harper's Tomb ")—is equally interesting, though not so rich in painting and sculpture. Its total length is four hundred and five feet, with a perpendicular descent of thirty-one feet. Here the wondering traveler obtains a glimpse of the manners and customs of the ancient Thebans, We enter a small room on whose walls the mysteries of the Egyptian kitchen are revealed. An ox is being slain; aman is filling a cauldron with the joints of the slaughtered beast; another is blowing the fire with the bellows; another is pounding something with a mortar; another is chopping meat into mince; another is making pastry; anotheris kneading dough. Farther on is a room whose walls are covered with paintings of furniture. There are chairs and sofas of elegant forms and richly ornamented; couches of seductive pattern, porcelain pottery, copper utensils, baskets of graceful shapes, mirrors and toilet articles, basins and ewers, and all the paraphernalia of stylish household furniture. Nothing I have seen in this strange land amazed me more than these latter. They prove the old Egyptians to have been versed in the elegant arts—to have known a degree of refinement in their private life indicating a high type of civilization. No dealer in "fancy wares" on Broadway or Montgomery street could present a more brilliant "assortment" than are displayed upon these time-honored walls.

Is there any thing "new under the sun?" How much have we advanced in the practical or elegant arts beyond the busy-bodies of ancient Thebes? Glass-blowing was practiced in the reign of Osirtasen over 3,800 years ago, and the form of the blow-pipe and the bottle differed little from that of our ​

own day. The same kind of plow was used in Egypt thirty centuries ago as is used to-day. The bastinado was the mode of punishment for minor offences in the time of Joseph as it is in this year of grace 1868; while then as now, hanging was the penalty for capital crimes. There is good reason to believe that the use of gunpowder was known in the days of the earlier Pharaohs. Anvils and blacksmiths' bellows, almost precisely like those seen in an American country smithy, are depicted on the walls of the grottoes of Beni Hassan. The germ of the Doric Column may be traced among the oldest relics of Egyptian art, and the Arch is older than Sesostris. The Thebans amused themselves with the game of draughts, and their athletes and jugglers performed some of the same feats with which the Buisleys and Hellers of our day astonish metropolitan audiences. The harp, guitar, lyre, drum and bugle are as old as the Pyramids; Theban artisans knew how to anneal and solder metals; and Theban poulterers understood the art of hatching eggs by artificial means. Looking-glasses adorned ladies' boudoirs long before Moses was found among the bulrushes, and pins and needles, and combs and fancy jewelry were as indispensable to the dear sex in the days of Rameses as in the days of Victoria.

I visited in succession twelve of these wonderful tombs. The same sculptures —the same rich paintings—the same splendid halls—the same vaulted roof— the same interminable processions of gods and goddesses, sacred animals and brute-headed, divinities characterize each. The eye wearies and the brain reels with the succession of strange scenes. You feel as-if you were in a new world—a _ wierd, subterranean world. Were these tombs intended only for the receptacles of the dead Pharaohs? Was all this lavishment of means—all this struggling for brilliant

effects—for xo other purpose than that of enshrining a mummy? Was this rich product of Art, which it took the life-time of a monarch to rear, to be ignobly sealed the moment he closed his puny eyes in death? I cannot believe it. I must believe, rather, that the tombs had other purposes—purposes connected in some manner with religious rites—perhaps with the horrid "mysteries "which form so essential a part of the Egyptian religion. I recall the description of them given by Ezekiel: "Then said he unto me: 'Son of man dig in the wail;' and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me: 'Go in and see the abominable things that they do there. And so I went in, and saw and beheld every form of creeping thing and abominable beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the walls around about."

Our next visit is to the tombs of the Priests and People, on the western side of the desert mountain. Like those of the kings, they are cut out of the solid rock. The largest, that of Asseseef, covers an area of over one acre. The sculptures and paintings of many of them are of absorbing interest. In one we find cabinetmakers and carpenters at work. One person is hewing a piece of timber; another is working on a sofa; another is chiseling out a sphynx; another is putting a piece of furniture together; another is engaged in manufacturing glassware; while a group of swarthy workmen are making bricks. Here is the interior of the house of a wealthy Egyptian. A lady is making a call. A servant offers her some wine; a black slave stands near with a plate in her hand; while several musicians are entertaining her with what were, doubtless, airs from the last opera. Let me give you an idea of how a Theban woman of fashion dressed. She wore a petticoat or gown, secured at the waist by a colored sash, or by straps over the ​

shoulders. Above this was a large loose robe, made of the finest linen, with full sleeves, tied in front, below the breast. The gown was of richly colored stuff, presenting a variety of patterns. Her dainty feet were encased in sandals, prettily worked, and turning up at the toes. Occcasionally she indulged in the extravagance of shoes or béots. Her hair was worn long and plaited; the back part consisted of a number of strings of hair, reaching to the bottom of the shoulder blades, while on each side other strings descended over the breast. An ornamented fillet encircled the head, and the strings of hair at the sides were separated and secured with a comb. From her ears hung large round single hoops of gold; sometimes an asp, whose body was of gold, set with precious stones, was worn. She had all the passion for finger jewelry of her modern sister. Sometimes two or three

rings were worn on the same finger,

while occasionally she indulged in the superfluous feminine extravagance of a ring on the thumb! So you see the sex is much the same, past and present, the world over.

The tombs. upon which the "first families" of Thebes so much prided themselves are now occupied as cow and donkey stables, and huts, by the miserable Arabs with which the neighborhood is infested. As the traveler wanders about from sepulchre to sepulchre, he is dogged by a squad of vagabonds, with arms and hands and feet and heads of mummies, whom they have sacrilegiously "unearthed," imploring him to buy these grim relics. I purchased a head of a "prominent citizen " for three piastres, while the delicate hands of a Theban belle were offered me for an equal sum. Our cook bought a whole mummy, coffin and all, for six piastres, to be taken to Alexandria as a present to his children. The reader must do his own moralizing.

After spending three days among the

tombs of the great, I was desirous of looking in upon the "pits" of the more ignoble dead. My guide led me bya narrow path, thickly strewn with fragments of mummies—hands, feet, legs, arms, trunks, scattered about in charming confusion—to a small opening in the side of the mountain. Through this I was compelled to crawl, some fifteen or twenty feet, to a larger opening. Lighting a torch, we continued our way until we came toa chamber filled with human mummies, piled one upon the other, to a depth of, I know not how many feet. Walking remorselessly over this horrid pavement, we came to another chamber, similarly filled; then another and another, tenanted by the same ghastly denizens. Sometimes I would sink to my knees into this mass of withered human carrion; sometimes my cruel heel would unwittingly crush in a grining face, or "go through" a mass of blackened bowels. There they lay, pellmell, a dozen deep, some headless, some sitting half upright, leering at vacancy, some lying helplessly with face downward, some with feet uppermost. There was one huge fellow, looking as if he might have been an extinct prize-fighter, minus a head, who measured over six feet from neck to heel. We turned him over, laid open his poor chest, and left him to his fate. I did not take the census of this motley congregation, but there must have been several hundred in a single "pit." Sir Gardener Wilkinson estimates that there are nine millions of mummies in the mountains about Thebes.

"To this complexion hath it come at last."" This reeking mass was once warm with life. Each had its little world in which it hoped and wrestled. Each strutted its brief-hour upon the great stage, and thought that hour /he pivotpoint upon which the world's destiny would turn evermore. There were strifes and bickerings and heartaches; there were rivalries and cliques and cabals ​

and petty warfares then. - Demagogues and knaves flourished then as now. Noisy patriots harangued from the stump, fanatics howled from the rostrum, and office seekers wandered up and down the earth.

From the mummy-pits to the Memnonium, the temple-palace of Sesostris. It is imposing even in its wreck. I ts lofty columns, crowned with capital and cornice, stand erect as in the days of its prime. It is approached by an avenue of sphynxes, terminating in a splendid propylon, richly covered with sculptures, commemorative of the triumph of the monarch whose name it bears. Near its entrance are the remains of a colossal statue of Sesostris, hewn out of a single block of granite, measuring twentythree feet across the breast, and weighing eight hundred and eighty-seven tons! This enormous colossus was

'hurled from his pedestal by the fury of Cambyses, and broken into fragments.

But splendid as is this temple, it is puny in comparison with that of Medeenet Habou, half a mile to the south. I cannot describe it at length. Passing the pylon, you enter a court, one hundred and ten by one hundred and thirteen feet, having on the one side a row of Osiride pillars, and on the other, eight similar columns, with bell-formed capitals, representing the full-blown lotus. Then follows the principal pylon, or gateway, surmounted by a row of sitting apes, the emblems of the god Thoth, which leads into the grand court. It measures one hundred and twenty-three by one hundred and thirty-three feet, and is surrounded by a peristyle, whose east and west sides are supported by five massive columns, the south by a row of eight pillars, and the north by a similar number. Behind is a superb corridor of circular columns, each with a circumference of twenty-three feet, and a height of twenty-four feet. These pillars are richly colored, and present

an appearance the most magnificent of which the imagination can conceive. The walls of this court are covered with sculpture, illustrating the Pharoah to whom the temple was dedicated. In one place he is represented as sitting in his car, while a heap of hands (those of his vanquished enemies) are placed before him, which an officer counts, while a scribe notes down in numbers. In another place he is returning from the wars. A long procession of captives, with pinioned arms, are marching beside and before him, while three of the number are bound to the axle of his chariot.

There are three other smaller temples on the western side of the river, two of which I visited, but which I cannot stop to describe. Indeed, the whole vast plain is one field of ruin. Columns and colossii, sphynxes and towers, rear their giant forms above the waste of sand as far as the eye can see. Wherever the traveler wanders, the same wrecks of the past arrest his progress. Some are barely visible above the sand, while others stand out clear and dauntless, as if defying the might of Time.

A short ride across the plain brings us vis-a-vis with the Vocal Memnon. There he sits, calm and stoical, as he sat when the sages of Greece and Rome came to do him homage, and listen to his greetings of the morning sun. He has long since, however, given up singing as a profession, and sends forth no welcome to the blushing Aurora as she kisses his weather-beaten brow. This modest veteran is hewn out of a single block of granite, and measures in his sitting posture some forty-seven feet in height. His face is sadly battered; he has lost his nose and left ear; his chest is quite gone, and the poor fellow looks shabby and woe-begone generally. An Arab boy climbed up his back and tried to imitate his "tricks upon travelers" by striking a "musical stone." But it was a poor imitation, and I left ​

him with a strong conviciion that his talents as an artist had been slightly exaggerated by Herodotus and his wonder-loving fellow historians. Near by sits his "big brother" equally herculean, equally storm-beaten, but not distinguished in the musical line.

But the greatest marvel of ancient Thebes is yet to be seen. Of all the ruined temples of Egypt—of all the ruined , wonders of the earth—Karnak on the east side of the river is the most impressive. No description, no plan, no diagram, can give expression to its vastness. It is approached from Luxor by an avenue of two hundred sphynxes, terminating at the outer gate-way of the temple. They are all headless now, but the pedestals remain to tell the glory of the past. There are three other approaches, all by similar lines of sphynxes, all with immense propylii, all terminated by vast courts and colonnades. The

walls of the principal gate-way are twenty-seven feet thick, while the towers

have almost the proportions of pyramids. A forest of towers and pillars and crumbling walls darken the heavens on every side. Entering the great hall the traveler is lost in wonder. This edifice measures one hundred and seventy-six by three hundred and twenty-nine feet, and is supported by a central avenue of twelve massive columns sixty-six feet high without the pedestal and abacus, and twelve feet in diameter. To this are added one hundred and twenty-two columns, each forty-one feet high and

twenty-seven and a-half feet in circumference. Beyond this are four lofty obelisks; then the sanctuary of polished granite, the walls richly sculptured and the ceiling studded with stars. Farther on another colonnade—another portico, another avenue of sphynxes—another magnificent propylon.

The body of the temple proper was twelve hundred feet long, and four hundred and twenty feet broad, while the entire field of ruins comprises a mile in diameter. Imagine a space equal to that occupied by one-third of the city of San Francisco, all devoted to a single temple and its approaches; imagine two lines of colossal sphynxes extending half a mile from each of its four sides; imagine each of these lines terminating in immense towers; imagine endless groupes of sculptured gods and godesses, lining every avenue and approach; imagine colossii of pure marble and polished granite, guarding every gateway—obelisks shooting upwards into the blue sky, towers rising in every direction; imagine the stately processions of priests, the myriads of devout worshipers that thronged its courts—the imposing pageants without, the darker mysteries within; imagine the great city in the days of its glory—its streets thronged with gay denizens—the river swarming with busy life—the whole world looking on with awe and wonder; imagine all this, and you will have some faint conception of Karnak—and of Thebes.