As we rode along, those Egyptians who were near the road bowed the knee to the prince, and remained stationary until he passed. We rode for a mile and a half through this brick-field, when at its extremity we came upon a large mean town of huts composed of reeds and covered with straw. "There," said Remeses, "are the dwellings of the laborers you have seen." These huts formed long streets or lanes which intersected each other in all directions. There was not a tree to shade them. The streets and doors were crowded with children, and old Hebrew women who were left to watch them while their parents were in the field. There seemed to be a dozen children to every house, and some of five and six years were playing at brick-making, one of their number acting as a taskmaster, holding a whip which he used with a willingness and frequency that showed how well the Egyptian officers had taught the lesson of severity and cruelty to the children of their victims. In these huts dwelt forty thousand Hebrews, who were engaged either in making brick, or conveying them to Raamses, close at hand, or in placing them in mortar upon the walls. We passed through the very midst of this wretched village of bondmen, whose only food in their habitations is garlic, and leeks, and fish or flesh, their drink the turbid water of the Nile, unfiltered from its impurities by means of porous stone and paste of almonds--a process of art so well known to the Egyptians. On the skirts of the village was a vast burial-place, without a tomb or stone; for these Hebrews are too poor and miserable to embalm their dead, even if customs of their own did not lead them to place them in the earth. The aspect of this melancholy place of sepulture was gloomy enough. It had the look of a vast ploughed plain; but infinitely desolate and hideous when the imagination pictured the corruption that lay beneath each narrow mound. I felt a sensation of relief when we left this spot behind, and drove upon a green plateau which lay between it and the treasure-city of the king. The place we were crossing had once been the garden of Hermes or Iosepf, the celebrated prince who about one hundred and thirty years ago saved the inhabitants of Egypt from perishing by famine, having received from the god Osiris knowledge of a seven years' famine to befall the kingdom, after seven years of plenty. This Prince Iosepf or Joseph was also called Hermes, though he wrote not all the books attributed to Hermes, as we in Phœnicia understand of that personage. "Was this Joseph an Egyptian?" I asked of the Prince Remeses, as we dashed past the ruins of a palace in the midst of the gardens. "No, a Hebrew," he answered. "He was the favorite of the Phœnician Pharaoh who commenced the palaces of this City of Treasure." "A Hebrew!" I exclaimed. "Not one of the race I behold about me toiling towards the city with sun-dried bricks upon their heads, and whom I have seen at work on the plain of bricks?"