At breakfast next morning, it was accordingly determined to quit Cairo in three days. The literary man considered that it was his duty to employ that time in writing a description of Cairo and the Pyramids on the spot. The party, however, did not succeed in completing their arrangements in less than a week. Mr Ringlady procured the most celebrated Dragoman remaining at Cairo, by paying him enormous wages, and giving him full power to lay in what provisions and take what measures he considered necessary for crossing the desert with comfort. The Dragoman hired was named Mohammed; and he commenced by purchasing double the quantity of stores required and sending half to his own house, as he said his new master looked like a man who would change his mind, and it would be satisfactory, should he return suddenly to Cairo, to find every thing ready for proceeding up the Nile. Mr Campbell and Mr Lascelles Hamilton arranged to hire a servant together, as far as Jerusalem. Sidney was attended by an Arab from Guzzerat, who had been with him for some time, and who, from being a subject of the East India Company, or an Englishman, was in less danger of suffering any inconvenience than a native from the part he was going to take in Aali’s enterprise. He was as black as a coal, but he spoke of Abyssinians, Nubians, and others, a shade lighter than himself, as “them d--n black fellows.” It was necessary to make a written contract with the sheikh of the camels for a journey from Cairo to Gaza, and this document required to be prepared at the English consulate. The scene at signing the document was a singular one. After much wrangling, during which the officials of the consulate stoutly defended the cause of the camel-drivers, who brought forward, one after another, nearly a dozen new pretensions, as pretexts for additional extortion, though the terms had been already arranged, the patience of Sidney and the exertions of Achmet el Khindee brought the negotiation to an end, and the treaty was signed. Then the chancellor of the English consulate stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands with great glee, exclaimed, “Now, gentlemen, you have concluded your bargain; let us hear what backshish you are going to give the sheikh?” As this question appeared to imply too close a sympathy between the feelings of the chancellory and the amount of the backshish, Mr Sidney quietly observed, that as he supposed the amount did not require to be registered in the archives of the British consulate, it could be settled at Gaza. Scenes of this kind are constantly repeated at all the trading consulates of the Levant; yet it is prudent for travellers not to enter into the desert, nor even to ascend the Nile, without a written contract at the consular office. Even should they pay something more than they might otherwise do, the surplus serves as an insurance against native fraud and open robbery, as the people recommended by the