I examined the Egyptian bricks with reference to the complaint of the Hebrews, that straw was not allowed them in the manufacture. A few here have straw mixed up with them, and it will doubtless check the process of disintegration to which they are exposed, but it does not seem at present to be considered a necessary ingredient. But it is universally employed in the process of manufacturing, or rather in drying the bricks. They are in size like our bricks, and are cut with a spade from the earth when moistened by the yearly floods. Fine straw is then scattered on the adjoining grounds, and the bricks are spread over this to dry; and were this precaution not used, the bricks in drying would adhere to the earth and be spoiled. I conclude, then, that here was occasioned the dilemma in which the Israelites soon found themselves; they could make the tale of bricks, but when they came to remove them at the close of their labors, they found them attached to the soil and their labors lost. I frequently saw bricks exposed for drying, but never without a layer of fine straw beneath. Their villages occur at intervals of five or six miles; generally they are on the river bank, but are often scattered over the interior, and with the groves of the graceful palm-tree often formed pretty groupings in the landscape. The natives are of a light ash color; and the men, though rather slender, are remarkably well-formed, light, and active, and capable of enduring fatigue. Their dress is sometimes like that of the Turks, but often simply a long piece of white cloth, like the Roman toga, wrapped around the body, with the ends thrown across the shoulders or supported under the arm; it is a graceful, but not very modest dress. But the women! How strange are the caprices of fashion, and often how extravagant and silly! In Turkey a woman is not allowed to show her face at all; a handkerchief drawn across the forehead, and another just below this, so as to cover all the face, and leave room only for the eyes to fall bashfully on the ground and pick out the lady’s way, secures their modesty. In Egypt a lady may expose all her face except the nose and mouth: these it would be the height of indelicacy to exhibit, and she protects them by a strip of black cotton stuff (black, think you!) about three feet in length and four inches wide. One end of this is fastened by a string passing across her forehead and tied at the back of her head; the cloth falls down over her nose and mouth, and the lady’s modesty is secure. It would be well for them to cover all the face, for a more ugly set of ladies I have never met with in any country. The Turkish costume has at least the advantage of making us _imagine_ beauty; and many a stranger is put in raptures of love by a pair of flashing eyes glancing on him from beneath the jealous muslins, when, if the covering was removed from the face, he would be ungallant enough to turn with disgust from both face and eyes.