friend, of this man, a footing upon which he never could place himself with a negro. I have given the above account of our visitor for an historical purpose. We find that some of the queens of Egypt were black. So must have been the wife of Moses. Their physical and mental characteristics, then, I suppose, must have resembled those of the Governor of Assouan. CHAPTER XXII. EGYPTIAN DONKEY-BOYS. Alas! regardless of their doom, The little victims play: No sense have they of ills to come, No care beyond to-day.—GRAY. The donkey-boys, the gamins of Egypt, are a quick-witted and amusing variety of the species. They are never sulky, or stupid. A joke is not lost upon them, and it is pleasing to see their supple features lighting up at its recognition. They often originate something of the kind themselves. The detection of their attempted exactions, and little villanies, is to them a source of merriment that is inexhaustible. They have picked up some English. What they have acquired they teach each other, and are always on the look-out to add, from the talk they have with their customers, a word or two more to their small store. I was sometimes asked by the bare-legged urchin running by my side to teach him English. At Benihassan, having one of these volunteer scholars who was asking the English for all the objects we passed, I found it was some time before he could pronounce the _ns_ at the end of the word beans, with a single emission of breath. We were passing through a bean-field. He endeavoured to get over his difficulty by the introduction of a vowel, making the word beanis. I had observed that the Arabs at the Pyramids dealt with the word sphinx in precisely the same way, disintegrating the _x_, and introducing an _i_, thus making it sphinkis. So the captain of our boat, being unable to utter the letters _cl_ without the intervention of a vowel, changed the name of one of our party from Clark into Kellark. The English expression best known and most used in Egypt is ‘All right.’ With some this represents the whole language, and, with the requisite variations in tone and gesticulation, does duty on all occasions. I heard one evening a sailor on board the boat giving another sailor a lesson in our noble tongue. The whole lesson consisted of the two phrases, ‘All right,’ and ‘D⸺d rogue.’ At Karnak the donkey-boy, who happened one day to be with me, asked me to teach him something. I told him he must first say something himself in English, that I might be able to adjust my instruction to his proficiency. Without a moment’s hesitation he gave the following specimen of his attainments in the language. It may also be taken as a specimen of the progress his youthful wits had made in the civilized art of flattery. ‘English man come see Karnak say, “Very fine! glorious!” French man come see Karnak say, “G— d⸺.”’ Had I been a Frenchman, the national imprecation would have been assigned to its rightful owner.