booths. Last year we were told that the proclamation of the Mayor was a mere farce, that the amusements were limited to a "few dancing booths, a swinging-boat, a shooting-gallery, and some cheap photographic establishments." The Horse Fair day is still an important one, and many good animals. are shewn and sold, but it is about the only day on which much business is transacted. Two or three firms still sell hops; and there seems still a demand for onions and besoms; but the glory of the place has departed, and it is no doubt well that it is so. No one could possibly think of uttering a regret that Mac Adam and Stephenson have brought to our very doors the necessaries and luxuries which our forefathers could only purchase at such places as Sturbridget Fair.

P.S.-A friend has drawn my attention to the fact, that Newton purchased the lenses with which he performed his experiments on light at Sturbridge Fair.-Vide Brewster's Life of Newton.

Cambridge Chronicle, September 7th, 21st and 28th.

† Every one must have noticed the number of different ways I have spelt this word. I have generally spelt it in the same manner as the authority I am then quoting. Besides the seventeen various spellings given above, the following may be noticed, viz. Sturberige, Stirberch, Styrebridge.

LETTERS FROM THE EAST.

I.-Alexandria.-Cairo.-Aden.

WE came in view of the lights at Alexandria soon after sunset on the fourth. As there is some danger in crossing the bar, we were compelled to stay out till daylight, when we took in our Arab pilot and entered the harbour. We were received by the Company's agent, from whom we learnt to our dismay that the Transit Railway having been destroyed a day or two previously by the inundation of the Nile, we should in consequence have to prosecute our journey to Cairo by steam-boat up the river. Pleasant news certainly! as we seemed to foresee all the delay and discomfort the heat and the filth of the proposed trip. Now however, our dangers surmounted, our discomforts at an end, I am inclined to think we were singularly fortunate in arriving at that critical moment. For besides the fact of our thus seeing more of that noble river than we otherwise should have seen, and at a time too when it had overflowed its banks and inundated a larger tract of country than usual; besides all this, we were enabled to make some stay at Alexandria and Cairo, instead of being hurried through Egypt in less than thirty-six hours according to contract. There is the satisfaction too, such as it is, of having seen something worth writing home about, and of being able to send one's friends a true and veritable history of this lamentable catastrophe from the pen of an eye-witness.

What a stirring drive that is from the Port to the Hotel— the European's first glimpse of Oriental life! I should doubt if any one could give an exact description of their first impressions. The wonder and amazement excited by the grotesque pictures which assail his eye, national pride with a sublime contempt for the half-civilized beings which surround him, the idea that he is treading ground so famous in history, sacred as well as profane. Yes! his feelings are

certainly of a very mixed character. The streets are narrow, the widest not exceeding twelve feet, yet they are crowded to an extent which always astonishes the stranger. Every shop-keeper assumes a right to sit outside his shop, some even extend this right to their journeymen tailors or cobblers. Thus on either side stretches a long line of picturesque figures, arranged in every colour and smoking every variety of pipe or cigarette. Look! here is a string of camels, laden with firewood or merchandize; here again a native waggon drawn by a pair of stout oxen, and there goes some grandee or other, mounted on a magnificent Arab. Now we are stopped by a drove of donkeys, their owner quite unconscious of the fact, till aroused to a painful sense of his position by sundry hard words and harder blows from our excitable Jehu, when he proceeds to hoist his quadrupeds successively by their hinder quarters out of our path. But what are those odd figures so completely shrouded in drapery? Those are the Egyptian ladies. Stare as much as you like, you can see nothing but a pair of flashing eyes. A mantle of rich silk, black or white,-black is the prevailing fashion at present, is thrown over the head and extended by the arms like wings, and thus Madame waddles along in her red or yellow slippers, a hideous spectacle. The lower classes are still more disgusting objects. Their only garment is of blue cloth, and as they cannot spare their hands to hold it, it is fastened by a piece of brass or a string of beads over the nose, so as to leave a gap for their killing eyes_to_pierce through. Now and then we meet one mounted à la Turque on a donkey, attended by her husband's servants.

At length we reach the Hotel d' Europe, where the crowd is even greater and the jabbering more confused than elsewhere. At the entrance are congregated innumerable carriages drawn by horses that would not disgrace Rotten Row, donkeys and donkey-boys, a crowd of filthy beggars, the lame, the blind, and the halt, supplicating for "Baksheesh," and wily dragomen looking out like vultures for their prey. A pretty set of fellows those dragomen are ! Reader, if ever you go to Egypt, keep a tight rein on them; you can't possibly do without them, but beware, they will tell you lies as fast as they can. I was amused at the first specimen I had of this. Mustapha was a fine handsome fellow, and evidently thought no small-beer of himself. He coolly took himself off for some hours in the middle of the day, and when I rebuked him on his return for his desertion, the lying scoundrel stroked his beard with pious horror, laid his

VOL. III.

K

hand on his heart and called Allah to witness he had been sent for to interfere in a domestic quarrel between his daughter and her husband. His brother had told me he had gone to dinner! At Cairo the ladies wished to see a real Turkish bath; our dragoman told the proprietress they were coming to bathe next day and wanted to inspect the baths first. 66 Why did you tell a lie, sir?" "Because I cannot do anything better," was his impudent reply, and I don't believe he could.

We drove past the Mussulman cemetery, a bare tract without enclosure of any kind, to inspect Pompey's Pillar. We were rather disappointed; the column is about one hundred feet high, and consists of four blocks of granite, brought from above the first Cataract, some seven hundred or eight hundred miles away. For further particulars, vide

Murray. Hard by are some catacombs lately discovered, apparently as far as I could make out from the inscriptions late Greek. We drove on by the side of Mehemet Ali's famous canal to the Pasha's gardens; gardens never equal one's expectations in Egypt; these are no exceptions to the rule, but the drive is pleasant as affording almost the only shade in Alexandria. It is indeed a lamentably bare country, dazzling with its inches of white dust, with only here and there a group of palm trees or an avenue of sycamores. We saw Cleopatra's needles of course. Only one obelisk is standing at present, on the edge of the sea, a fine object from the harbour; the other is prostrate, covered with some feet of earth, a small aperture being dug to assure European visitors of its existence. The Pasha's Palace was the next object of our curiosity; it is situated at the west corner of the Port, of which it commands an exquisite view; with the exception however of the inlaid floors, which to some extent repay the trouble of a visit, the internal arrangements are tawdry and insignificant in the extreme. French paper and French gilt! that is all! Another peculiarity with all the Oriental "lions" is this once erected, they are forgotten and utterly neglected, their pristine glory soon falls into decay. The grand Mosque at Cairo is the only exception to this rule, to be accounted for perhaps by the amount of English perquisites.

At nine P.M. we were at the railway station, a ride of ten or fifteen miles brought us within a few hundred yards of the canal. So away we had to scramble, nearly two hundred of us, for the ladies came in half-an-hour after us; away we scrambled, lighted by some scores of torches, held aloft by figures who seemed to have made a nocturnal trip from the

infernal regions for the purpose; away we scrambled with these imps of darkness yelling and jabbering, as if to impress us more fully with their origin. And what a scene on board the Nile boat! no larger than a Thames steamer, it was intended to accommodate us for two nights and a day: certainly they were rather taken by storm, but if the passengers by the next mail are not better treated, shame on the Transit Administration Company altogether! That night I slept or tried to sleep on deck, for vermin and cold are strong antidotes to repose; there was a saloon which might have held half the ladies, and a fore-cabin which might contain a fourth of the gentlemen, lie as thick as they could. The majority like myself had to brave it out on deck, though unlike myself they had mostly a good supply of rugs.

We reached Atfih at dawn, the point where the canal joins the Nile. This was our first view of the sacred river! Ah! honoured stream! worshipped as the fertilizing principle by thine ancient devotees, appearing to us rather as a mighty engine of destruction! Stretching away far as the eye could reach, thou had'st washed out nearly every trace of humanity! And what waters! surely the Naiads of thy stream must bear a striking resemblance to the swarthy people that crowd thy banks! Water in its natural state like pea-soup, when filtered a trifle better than ditch-water. But what of that? thy fertilizing properties consist in thy dregs. The current was so strong as to carry us half a mile out of our course on emerging from the locks, and we were able to make but little progress against it, our speed never exceeding from four to five miles an hour. As we proceeded, the scenes of the late devastations successively burst upon our view; fields of cotton and Indian corn hopelessly immersed, villages swept away, while the unfortunate population were collected on the embankments with their flocks of camels and buffaloes, a long line of misery on either side of Egypt's mighty river. To be sure the towns and villages spared by this Egyptian Vishnu, did not give us much cause to regret those which had fallen victims to his divine wrath. Half-a-dozen palm trees, a minaret, and some scores of square mud-houses, like so many unburnt brick-kilns, and you have the facsimile, they are all alike. But notwithstanding the scene of devastation which everywhere met our eyes, there was something inexpressibly grand in stemming the current that had wrought the woe, and casting a glance upon the vast expanse of water, darkened here and there with the sail of a native boat, or the carcase of a drowned buffalo. And this was