CAIRO. 31 done to the villages about, which were all hotbeds of the disease. They tell me it is perfectly wonder ful how difficult it is to burn down closed-in earth- walled huts, particularly when, as my husband explained to me, they are built in rooms com municating from one to the other by small doors throughout their whole length, and, except these same doors, have no other opening; so the stench, he says, was frightful. All who saw them agreed that the air of Egypt must have a most wonderful health-giving property to enable people who inhabit such holes to live at all. The great museum of antiquities is at Boulak, pleasantly situated on the banks of the river. The great object of interest to us was the late discovery of the mummies of the twenty-second dynasty. This is the one which contains the Pharaoh that Bible records say was drowned in the Red Sea. Should his particular mummy not be found, it will be an extraordinary and welcome affirmation of the historical correctness of that great Book. The belief which the Egyptians had in the absolute necessity of embalming was owing to their idea that in eternity the body could not come to life again unless all the principal parts were carefully bound up and preserved. Under these circumstances, some thing very peculiar must have happened to prevent the mummy of one of those powerful kings being laid with those of his dynasty. By-the-by, while talking of that period, I saw this morning a man dressed in one of those many-coloured coats which so
