Page:Pharos and Pharillon.pdf/69

 two pistols at once. They outsailed their pursuers, and sped up the lower reach to Rosetta, then a more important place than Alexandria and apparently a tidier place. Eliza was delighted. Thoughts of England and of the English Bible at once welled up in her mind.

There is an appearance of cleanliness in Rosetta, the more gratifying because seldom met with in any degree so as to remind us of what we are accustomed to at home. The landscape around was interesting from its novelty, and became peculiarly so on considering it as the country where the children of Israel sojourned. The beautiful, I may say the unparalleled story of Joseph and his brethren rose to my mind as I surveyed these banks on which the Patriarch sought shelter for his old age, where his self-convicted sons bowed down before their younger brother, and I almost felt as if in a dream, so wonderful appeared the circumstance of my being here.

It is news that Jacob ever resided in the province of Behera. Passing by this, and by the Pyramids which they only saw from a distance, we accompany the Fays to Boulac, "the port of Grand Cairo," where their troubles increased. Restrictions against Christians being even severer here than at Alexandria, Mrs. Fay had to dress as a native before she might enter the city. "I had in the first place a pair of trousers with yellow leather half-boots and slippers over them; then a long satin gown, another gown with short sleeves, a robe of silk like a surplice, muslin from her forehead to her feet, and over everything a piece of black silk.

"Thus equipped, stumbling at every step, I sallied forth, and with great difficulty got across my noble beast; but as the veil prevented me breathing freely I must have died by the way." She rode into the European enclave where terror and