We inquired of Mohammed concerning the magician, whose exploits Mr. Lane and other authors have recorded.  At first, he did not understand what we meant; but, upon further explanation, told us that he thought the whole an imposture.  He said, that when a boy, about the age of the Arab captain’s son, who was on board, he was in the service of a lady who wished to witness the exhibition, and who selected him as the medium of communication, because she said that she knew he would tell her the truth.  The ceremonies, therefore, commenced; but though anxiously looking into the magic mirror, he declared that he saw nothing:  afterwards, he continued, “A boy was called out of the bazaar, who saw all that the man told him.”  But while Mohammed expressed his entire disbelief in the power of this celebrated person, he was not devoid of the superstition of his creed and country, for he told us that he knew of another who really did wonderful things.  He then asked us what we had called the Mughreebee whom we had described to him:  we replied, a magician; and he and the janissary repeated the word over many times, in order to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with it.  In all cases, they were delighted with the acquisition of a new word, and were very thankful to me when I corrected their pronunciation.  Thus, when the janissary showed me what he called kundergo, growing in the fields, and explained that it made a blue dye, and I told him that we called it indigo, he never rested until he had learned the word, which he repeated to Mohammed and Mohammed to him.  I never met with two more intelligent men in their rank of life, or persons who would do greater credit to their teachers; and brief as has been my intercourse with the Egyptians, I feel persuaded, that a good method of imparting knowledge is all that is wanting to raise them in the scale of nations.

During our progress up the river, I had been schooling myself, and endeavouring to keep down my expectations, lest I should be disappointed at the sight of the Pyramids.  We were told that we should see them at the distance of five-and-thirty miles; and when informed that they were in view, my heart beat audibly as I threw open the cabin door, and beheld them gleaming in the sun, pure and bright as the silvery clouds above them.  Far from being disappointed, the vastness of their dimensions struck me at once, as they rose in lonely majesty on the bare plain, with nothing to detract from their grandeur, or to afford, by its littleness, a point of comparison.  We were never tired of gazing upon these noble monuments of an age shrouded in impenetrable mystery.  They were afterwards seen at less advantage, in consequence of the intervention of some rising ground; but from all points they created the strongest degree of interest.