happened that we afterward came in the way of several Mohammedan festivals both in Egypt and Syria, and we invariably found the swings at work all day and the fire-works going off every evening. To-day the swings outside the Báb en-Nasr were never idle. Here were creaking Russian swings hung with little painted chariots for the children; and plain rope swings, some of them as high as Haman’s gallows, for the men. For my own part, I know no sight more comic and incongruous than the serene enjoyment with which a bearded, turbaned, middle-aged Egyptian squats upon his heels on the tiny wooden seat of one of these enormous swings, and, holding on to the side-ropes for dear life, goes careering up forty feet high into the air at every turn. At a little before midday, when the heat and glare were becoming intolerable, the swings suddenly ceased going, the crowd surged in the direction of the gate, and a distant drumming announced the approach of the procession. First came a string of baggage-camels laden with tent furniture; then some two hundred pilgrims on foot, chanting passages from the Korân; then a regiment of Egyptian infantry, the men in a coarse white linen uniform, consisting of coat, baggy trousers and gaiters, with cross-belts and cartouche-boxes of plain black leather, and the red fez, or tarboosh, on the head. Next after these came more pilgrims, followed by a body of dervishes carrying green banners embroidered with Arabic sentences in white and yellow; then a native cavalry regiment headed by a general and four colonels in magnificent gold embroidery and preceded by an excellent military band; then another band and a second regiment of infantry; then more colonels, followed by a regiment of lancers mounted on capital gray horses and carrying lances topped with small red and green pennants. After these had gone by there was a long stoppage, and then, with endless breaks and interruptions, came a straggling, irregular crowd of pilgrims, chiefly of the fellah class, beating small darabukkehs, or native drums. Those about us estimated their number at two thousand. And now, their guttural chorus audible long before they arrived in sight, came the howling dervishes--a ragged, wild-looking, ruffianly set, rolling their heads from side to side, and keeping up a hoarse, incessant cry of “Allàh! Allàh! Allàh!” Of these there may have been a couple of hundred. The sheiks of the principal order of dervishes came next in order, superbly dressed in robes of brilliant colors embroidered with gold and mounted on magnificent Arabs. Finest of all, in a green turban and scarlet mantle, rode the Sheik of Hasaneyn, who is a descendant of the prophet; but the most important, the Sheik el Bekree, who is a sort of Egyptian Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of all the dervishes, came last, riding a white Arab with gold-embroidered housings. He was a placid-looking old man, and wore a violet robe and an enormous red and green turban.