I fell in with an amusing specimen of the Arab village girl, at Benihassan. I had been to the tombs that are known by the name of this place. They are cut in the rock of the hill-side, and are as interesting and instructive as any to be found elsewhere in Egypt, both architecturally and pictorially. They contain some arched ceilings, though not of construction, but excavated in that form, and sixteen-sided piers, each face being slightly concaved, and closely resembling the Doric style. The illustrations, on the walls, of Egyptian life in the remote days of the primæval monarchy, to which these paintings belong, are varied and curious. They have unfortunately been somewhat injured, not so much, however, by time, as from the tombs having been used for human habitation. As I was riding back from an inspection of these antique monuments, an Arab girl, not of the crocus, but of the nut-brown tint, attached herself to me, and was very pressing for backsheesh. Having for some time held out against her petition, she suddenly sprang forward a few paces, and threw herself on the ground, exactly in the donkeys path, and became violently convulsed with a storm of uncontrollable agony. In her convulsions she shrieked, and threw dust on her head. I rode on, apparently without taking any notice of the victim of overwhelming disappointment. In a few moments she was up again, and again at my side with the same petition. A few moments later she enacted a second time the scene of distracted agony. But finding that one’s flinty heart was not moved in the way expected by these harrowing performances, With Nature’s mother-wit, and arts _well_ known before, for the remainder of the way she ran alongside, still holding out her hand, but now all open sunshine and winsome smiles. Her whole simple being was so entirely bent to the one point of getting a piastre, that the little exhibition had an interest one was unwilling to terminate. Those who have hitherto seen only the muddy-red skins, and leathery mulattoes of the western world, will be surprised at finding the soft, smooth browns and yellows of the east so pleasing. They may almost come to think that these are the most natural complexions both for man and woman; and that in this matter the white of our lilies is—but such a heresy is inconceivable—rather the defect than the perfection of colour.