Two great streams rises in the Mountain of the Moon, in Abyssinia, and unites in Nubia, and flows through Egypt, and makes what we call “The Nile.” This splendid old stream flows on gradually as in the days of Pharaoh, and Jupiter Hammon; splendid, because in those days its banks were walled with rich cities. The remains of Thebes stand like Catskill mountains, unshocked. I mean the remains, the renowned Memnonian, Luxor and Carnack. The tall columns of the Memnonian is here like untold riddles to be explained. The paintings are as bright to-day as any modern picture I have seen in the Louvre, at Paris. The carved chariots on the walls convey the idea, “I see Remesees and Pharaoh’s on the battlefield.” These chariots seem to have carried only two or three warriors with their spears in the battle. On the outside wall of this temple is carved, the exact likeness of a “man’s individual part,” varying from 6 to 13 inches in length, and hanging beneath each is two balls, seeming to be connected like the two big parts of a heart, and both gradually sloping down together. It is supposed, that cutting off these parts of man was the punishment or qualification required to degrade those gents of the Remesee court, who were too polite to the ladies. But why gallant gentlemen should be treated so I shall leave for the conjecture of the learned reader. Some light may be thrown on this subject by reference to the preceeding page, on Constantinople’s manner of preparing gentlemen’s nature for taking ladies to the baths.

These great temples are situated so that it takes a man many days to see them. They are on different sides of the Nile. Carnack is a tremendous mass of splendid ruins. Owls and foxes dwell within; and I saw a pretty bird, half asleep, that a man told me was a whip-poor-will. It is no pleasant thing to stop in these ruins a few hours alone, unless a man was possessed of no imagination at all. On one of the splendid painted broken columns that ran up through the hall or court of the unapproachable Pharaoh, Ptolemy, or Remese, a fox or hawk had been breakfasting on a rabbit, and martins had their nests perched on the side of the spreading columns that supported the beams of solid stone, of 12 feet wide and 20 long, over head. These ruins were sights of wonder to behold. Thebes could send to war 20,000 men from each of her hundred gates, making in............