‘Fortunate Jordan! Fortunate Ilissus! I have waded through the sacred waters; with difficulty I traced the scanty windings of the classic stream. Alas! for the exuberant Tigris; alas! for the mighty Euphrates; alas! for the mysterious Nile!’ It is curious that no allusion whatever to the Jews has yet turned up on any Egyptian monuments. But upon the walls of Medoenet Habu I observed, more than once repeated, the Ark borne in triumph. This is not a fanciful resemblance. It responds in every particular. I have noticed the history of Ancient Egypt, because some knowledge of it is necessary to illustrate Thebes. I quit a subject which, however curious, is probably of too confined an interest for the general reader, and I enter in his company the City of the Hundred Gates. The Nile winds through the valley of Thebes--a valley formed by ranges of mountains, which on one side defend it from the great Lybian desert, and on the other from the rocky wilderness that leads to the Red Sea. On each side of the stream are two great quarters of ruins. On the side of the Red Sea are Luxor and Karnak, on the opposite bank the great temple called the Memnonion, and the various piles which, under the general title of Medoenet Habu, in all probability among other structures comprise the principal palace of the more ancient Pharaohs. On the Lybian side, also, are the cemeteries of the great city-the mummy caves of Gornou, two miles in extent; above them, excavated in the mountains, the tombs of the Queens, and in the adjacent valley of Beban-el-Maluk the famous tombs of the Kings. The population of the City of the Hundred Gates now consists of a few Arab families, who form four villages of mud huts clustered round those gigantic columns and mighty obelisks, a single one of which is sought for by the greatest sovereigns of Europe for their palaces and museums as the rarest of curious treasures. Often, indeed, have I seen a whole Arab village rising from the roof of a single Egyptian temple. Dendera is an instance. The population of Gornou, in number between three and four hundred, reside solely in the tombs.