I saw the exterior of some of these houses on the banks of the Nile, but never had an opportunity of seeing their interior. Sir R. Wilson says, in vol. i. pp. 156, 157, "All language is insufficient to give a just idea of the misery of an Egyptian village; but those who have been in Ireland, may best suppose the degree, when an Irish hut is described as a palace, in comparison to an Arab's stye; for it can be called by no other name. Each habitation is built of mud, even the roof, and resembles in shape an oven: within is only one apartment, generally of about ten feet square. The door does not admit of a man's entering upright; but, as the bottom is dug out about two feet, when in the room an erect posture is possible. A mat, some large vessels to hold water, which is the constant occupation of the women to fetch; a pitcher made of fine porous clay, found best in Upper Egypt, near Cunei, and in which the water is kept very cool; a rice pan and coffee pot, are all the ornaments and utensils. Here, then, a whole family eat and sleep without any consideration of decency or cleanliness; being, in regard to the latter, worse even than the beasts of the field, which naturally respect their own tenements." Footnote 21: Sir R. Wilson's History, vol. ii. p. 116. Footnote 22: Ibid. pp. 115, 132. Footnote 23: Ibid. p. 119. Footnote 24: Ibid. p. 121. Footnote 25: "General _Le Grange_ assured us, when on board the _Braakel_, that the ravages in the French army, caused by the plague, during the month of April, at one time, amounted to an hundred men in a single day." Footnote 26: "Sir Sidney Smith informed the author (Dr. Clarke) that one night, preferring a bed upon the sand of the desert to a night's lodging in the village of Etko, as thinking he should be more secure from vermin, he found himself, in the morning, entirely covered by them. Lice and _scorpions_ abound in all the sandy desert near Alexandria." One of my comrades informed me, that when some of the _date_ trees were split at _Aboukir_, for making the hospital, there were so many lice in the hearts of them that they might have been gathered in handfuls. The frogs also were so abundant at some of the places where the army halted between Rosetta and Cairo, that it was not possible to get at the water in the river without treading upon them; and at one place the camp ground was literally covered with black beetles, to the no small annoyance of the soldiers in the tents, and the bed frames and mats that we got new in the hospital in Rosetta in the end of June, were so full of bugs by the end of September, that they were fit only to be burnt. Footnote 27: Clarke's Travels, vol. v. pp. 56, 59. Footnote 28: