He accordingly took his passage on board of some ship bound for Egypt, and arrived in the harbour of Alexandria on the 9th of June, 1815. The plague, he was informed, was now in the city, but gradually decreasing in malignity. St. John’s day, the 24th of June, was likewise at hand, on which it usually ceases entirely, through the interference, as the vulgar believe, of the saint, but in reality from the intense heat of the sun, which has by that time exhaled those damp miasmata which are the immediate cause of the plague. Belzoni, who was accompanied by his wife and a young Irish lad, named Curtain, landed, notwithstanding the disease; and having remained secluded in the occale, or khun, until after the 24th, set off for Cairo. On reaching this city, where he meant to make an offer of his services to the pasha, to whose principal interpreter he brought letters of recommendation, he obtained lodgings in an old house, which from its vast size and ruinous condition would have made a handsome figure in one of Mrs. Ratcliffe’s romances. Though antiquities, as he observes, were not at that time his object, he could not refrain from visiting the Pyramids. He accordingly accompanied an English gentleman to the spot, where they passed the night, and long before dawn had ascended the summit of the highest pile, to behold the sun rise over the land of Egypt. “The scene here,” says he, “is majestic and grand far beyond description: a mist over the plains of Egypt formed a veil, which ascended and vanished gradually as the sun rose, and unveiled to the view that beautiful land, once the site of Memphis. The distant view of the smaller pyramids on the south marked the extension of that vast capital; while the solemn endless spectacle of the desert, on the west, inspired us with reverence for the all-powerful Creator. The fertile lands on the north, with the serpentine course of the Nile, descending towards the sea; the rich appearance of Cairo, and its minarets, at the foot of the Mokatam mountain, on the east; the beautiful plain which extends from the Pyramids to that city; the Nile, which flows magnificently through the centre of the Sacred Valley; and the thick groves of palm-trees under our eyes, altogether formed a scene of which a very imperfect idea can be given by the most elaborate description.”