hulk had been cast on shore.  The well, which had attracted my donkeys, was very picturesque; the water flowed into a large stone trough, or rather basin, beneath the walls of a castellated edifice, pierced with many small windows, and apparently in a very dilapidated state.  Those melancholy memento moris, which had tracked our whole progress through the desert, were to be seen in the immediate vicinity of this well.  The skeletons of five or six camels lay in a group within a few yards of the haven which they had doubtless toiled anxiously, though so vainly, to reach.  I never could look upon the bones of these poor animals without a painful feeling, and in the hope that European skill and science may yet bring forward those hidden waters which would disarm the desert of its terrors.  It is said that the experiment of boring has been tried, and failed, between Suez and Cairo, but that it succeeded in the great desert; some other method, perhaps, may be found, if the project of bringing water from the hills, by means of aqueducts, should be too expensive.  We heard this plan talked of at the bungalow, but I fear that, in the present state of Egypt, it is very chimerical.

This was now our fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome.  Doubtless, at a less favourable period of the year, both would prove difficult to bear.  The wind, we were told, frequently raised the sand in clouds; and though the danger of being buried beneath the tombs thus made, we had reason to believe, was greatly exaggerated, yet the plague of sand is certainly an evil to be dreaded, and travellers will do well to avoid the season in which it prevails.  The speed of my donkeys increasing, rather than diminishing, after we left the well, for they seemed to know that Suez would terminate their journey, I crossed the intervening three miles very quickly, and was soon at the walls of the town.

Distance lends no enchantment to the view of Suez.  It is difficult to fancy that the few miserable buildings, appearing upon the margin of the sea, actually constitute a town; and the heart sinks at the approach to a place so barren and desolate.  My donkeys carried me through a gap in the wall, which answered all the purposes of a gateway, and we passed along broken ground and among wretched habitations, more fit for the abode of savage beasts than men.  Even the superior description of houses bore so forlorn and dilapidated an appearance, that I actually trembled as I approached them, fearing that my guide would stop, and tell me that, my journey was at an end.