On the 18th Bonaparte was present at the ceremony of opening the dyke of the canal of Cairo, which receives the water of the Nile when it reaches the height fired by the Mequyas.

Two days after came the anniversary festival of the birth of Mahomet.  At this Napoleon was also present, in company with the sheik El Bekri,’ who at his request gave him two young Mamelukes, Ibrahim, and Roustan.

—­[The General-in-Chief went to celebrate, the feast of the Prophet at the house of the sheik El Bekri.  The ceremony was began by the recital of a kind of litany, containing the life of Mahomet from his birth to his death.  About a hundred sheiks, sitting in a circle, on carpets, with their legs crossed, recited all the verses, swinging their bodies violently backwards and forwards, and altogether.

A grand dinner was afterwards served up, at which the guests sat on carpets, with their legs across.  There were twenty tables, and five or six people at each table.  That of the General-in-Chief and the sheik El Bekri was in the middle; a little slab of a precious kind of wood ornamented with mosaic work was placed eighteen inches above the floor and covered with a great number of dishes in succession.  They were pillaws of rice, a particular kind of roast, entrees, and pastry, all very highly spiced.  The sheiks picked everything with their fingers.  Accordingly water was brought to wash the hands three times during dinner.  Gooseberry-water, lemonade, and other sorts of sherbets were served to drink, and abundance of preserves and confectionery with the dessert.  On the whole, the dinner was not disagreeable; it was only the manner of eating it that seemed strange to us.

In the evening the whole city was illuminated.  After dinner the party went into the square of El Bekri, the illumination of which, in coloured lamps, was very beautiful.  An immense concourse of people attended.  They were all placed in order, in ranks of from twenty to a hundred persons, who, standing close together, recited the prayers and litanies of the Prophet with movements which kept increasing, until at length they seemed to be convulsive, and some of the most zealous fainted sway (’Memoirs of Napoleon’).]—­

—­[Roustan or Rustan, a Mameluke, was always with Napoleon from the time of the return from Egypt till 1814, when he abandoned his master.  He slept at or near the door of Napoleon.  See Remusat, tome i, p. 209, for an amusing description of the alarm of Josephine, and the precipitate flight of Madame de Remusat, at the idea of being met and killed by this man in one of Josephine’s nocturnal attacks on the privacy of her husband when closeted with his mistress.]—­

It has been alleged that Bonaparte, when in Egypt, took part in the religious ceremonies and worship of the Mussulmans; but it cannot be said that he celebrated the festivals of the overflowing of the Nile and the