wide windows. Hence he can retire to a comfortable couch, and soon falls into a refreshing sleep. But he is cruelly dragged back into a state of consciousness by a something that rings most discordantly on his ear, and which, on his rushing to the window, he discovers to proceed from the violin of a villainous Greek, who is twanging away without any particular object, but eventually strikes up some popular Cyprus air, consisting of about three bars of very wretched music, played over three hundred times with three hundred different squeaks and intonations. This Greek is a public serenader, and passes the night in wandering from street to street, occasionally accompanying the instrument with his voice, and sometimes having it accompanied also with the howl of a troop of street dogs.

Such was my experience of rest in Beyrout, and I had hardly recovered my equanimity, and was congratulating myself on having got rid of this night-owl, when my quiet was again invaded. The old man, who was employed as a

night-watcher in the street, was enjoying a comfortable nap in a dry gutter under the window, till brought to a sense of his nocturnal duties by the same cause that made me start out of bed. Conscious of his delinquency as a watchman, he now endeavoured, and succeeded beyond doubt, in making every one aware of his being wide awake, and watchful of the interests entrusted to his care, by going up one side of the street shouting at the top of his voice divers imprecations and direful threats, directed at some persons unknown. But he soon came

back, singing an Oriental comic song, and stopping where he started from, laughed loud and long at his own prowess. Then he belaboured with his huge cudgel the head and shoulders of some luckless cur that was snoring contentedly on a heap of rubbish, collected in the centre of the street; and the yelping of the dog woke up a whole legion of the canine brood, who rushed round the corner, and fell upon the victim of the watchman's wrath. The yelping, and barking, and growling, and snapping was

instantly responded to in every quarter of the town, and the noise was echoed far and wide, gradually dying away in the distant dismal howling of a troop of jackals. Thus was I obliged to sit up a great part of the night in my bed, where in addition to other disagreeables, I was now assailed by mosquitoes and fleas, and became hopeless of farther sleep.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Hummum-An Oriental dressing-room-Adventure of a Turkish lady-An Eastern auctioneer - The favourite lounge-Perilous feat-The Marina-The Sisters of Charity—The American Missionaries—The Protestant burial-ground - English residents-The Barracks.

I AWOKE with the sun, more tired and careworn and feverish, than if I had been up and dancing at a ball all night. There was a hot wind, blowing straight from the desert, a scorching wind that dried up everything. My eyes were burning, my lips parched, and my whole frame enfeebled. It was small con

solation to hear that this dreadful wind must blow for three days. In the height of my despair I was recommended to take a Turkish bath. Loading my servant with all the necessary appendages, I staggered through one or two dark streets, and at length found myself at the hummum.

Here is to be had the greatest of all Oriental luxuries! Travellers, weary with wandering over arid and burnt-up regions, find in the hummum immediate relief for their stiff and tired limbs. The exquisite pleasure of having torrents of icy cold water rushing over your head and shoulders, in a room so heated that the vapour is rising like smoke from the floor; the preparatory luke-warm bath, the water of which grows gradually hotter and hotter, as the old man, in whose hands you are undergoing friction, gets more and more excited in the discharge of his arduous duty; the frothing up of soapsuds from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head; these are grievances for which one is amply repaid, by the final torrent