At Ephesus the traveller beheld the tomb of St. John the Evangelist, and heard the familiar story that the apostle had entered the sepulchre alive, and was still living, in accordance with the saying of our Lord, "So I will have him to remain till I come, what is that to thee?" "And men may see there the earth of the tomb many times openly stir and move, as though there were living things under." To say nothing else of this story, it is not fully consistent with Sir John's other statement, that the tomb contains nothing but manna, "which is called angels' meat," for the body was translated to paradise. Quite as great are the wonders of Joppa, "which is one of the oldest towns in the world; for it was founded _before Noah's flood_." Strangely confusing the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, our traveller relates that in a rock near Joppa may still be seen marks of the iron chains "wherewith Andromeda, a great giant, was bound and put in prison before Noah's flood; a rib of whose side, which is forty feet long, is still shown." Sir John spent a long time in the service of the sultan of Egypt, where he seems to have anticipated modern researches into the source of the Nile; for he confidently assures us that it rises in the garden of Eden, and after descending upon earth, flows through many extensive countries under ground, coming out beneath a high hill called Alothe, between India and Ethiopia, and encircling the whole of Ethiopia and Mauritania, before it enters the land of Egypt. To the best of our belief, the travels of Dr. Livingstone have not fully confirmed this interesting geographical statement. The sultan dwells at a city called Babylon, which is not, however, the great Babylon where the diversity of languages was first made by the miracle of God. That Babylon is forty days' journey across the desert, in the territory of the king of Persia. The Tower of Babel was ten miles square, and included many mansions and dwellings; "but it is full long since any man dare approach to the tower, for it is all desert, and full of dragons and great serpents, and infested by divers venomous beasts." Sir John, therefore, is probably not responsible for the extraordinary measurement of its walls. Whether his account of the phoenix is based upon his personal observations, we are not told; but it is highly interesting. There is only one phoenix in the world. It is a very handsome and glorious bird, with a yellow neck, blue beak, purple wings, and a red and yellow tail, and may often be seen flying about the country. It lives five hundred years, and at the end of that time comes to burn itself on the altar of the temple of Heliopolis, where the priests prepare for the occasion a fire of spices and sulphur. The next day they find in the ashes a worm. On the second day the worm becomes a live and perfect bird; and the third day it flies away. A plenty of fine things, indeed, Egypt could boast of in those days, far before any thing she has now.