said he, “the man that has not seen Egypt has not seen the greatest rarity in the world.  All the land there is golden; I mean, it is so fertile, that it enriches its inhabitants.  All the women of that country charm you by their beauty and their agreeable carriage.  If you speak of the Nile, where is there a more wonderful river?  What water was ever lighter or more delicious?  The very slime it carries along in its overflowing fattens the fields, which produce a thousand times more than other countries that are cultivated with the greatest labour.  Observe what a poet said of the Egyptians, when he was obliged to depart from Egypt:  ‘Your Nile loads you with blessings every day; it is for you only that it runs from such a distance.  Alas! in removing from you, my tears will flow as abundantly as its waters; you are to continue in the enjoyment of its sweetnesses, while I am condemned to deprive myself of them against my will.’

“If you look,” added my father, “towards the island that is formed by the two greatest branches of the Nile, what variety of verdure!  What enamel of all sorts of flowers!  What a prodigious number of cities, villages, canals, and a thousand other agreeable objects!  If you turn your eyes on the other side, up towards Ethiopia, how many other subjects of admiration!  I cannot compare the verdure of so many plains, watered by the different canals of the island, better than to brilliant emeralds set in silver.  Is not Grand Cairo the largest, the most populous, and the richest city in the world?  What a number of magnificent edifices both public and private!  If you view the pyramids, you will be filled with astonishment at the sight of the masses of stone of an enormous thickness, which rear their heads to the skies!  You will be obliged to confess, that the Pharaohs, who employed such riches, and so many men in building them, must have surpassed in magnificence and invention all the monarchs who have appeared since, not only in Egypt, but in all the world, for having left monuments so worthy of their memory:  monuments so ancient, that the learned cannot agree upon the date of their erection; yet such as will last to the end of time.  I pass over in silence the maritime cities of the kingdom of Egypt, such as Damietta, Rosetta, and Alexandria, where nations come for various sorts of grain, cloth, and an infinite number of commodities calculated for accommodation and delight.  I speak of what I know; for I spent some years there in my youth, which I shall always reckon the most agreeable part of my life.”

My uncles could make no reply, and assented to all my father had said of the Nile, of Cairo, and of the whole kingdom of Egypt.  My imagination was so full of these subjects, I could not sleep that night.  Soon after, my uncles declared how much they were struck with my father’s account.  They made a proposal to him, that they should travel all together into Egypt.  To this he assented; and being rich merchants,