children, and favorite horses, preferring it, with very good reason, to
the palace in the town, where he transacted business, and where the new
mosque intercepted the view of the Nile, while this eminence commanded a
wide prospect.

The sun was near setting when Orion reached the spot, but the general had
not yet come in from the chase, and the gate-keeper requested that he
would wait.

Orion was accustomed to be treated in his own country as the heir of the
greatest man in it; the color mounted to his brow and his Egyptian heart
revolted at having to bend his pride and swallow his wrath before an
Arab. He was one of the subject race, and the thought that one word from
his lips would suffice to secure his reception in the ranks of the rulers
forced itself suddenly on his mind; but he repressed it with all his
might, and silently allowed himself to be conducted to a terrace screened
by a vine-covered trellis from the heat of the sun.

He sat down on one of the marble seats by the parapet of this hanging
garden and looked westward. He knew the scene well, it was the
playground of his childhood and youth; hundreds of times the picture had
spread before him, and yet it affected him to-day as it had never done
before. Was there on earth--he asked himself--a more fertile and
luxuriant land? Had not even the Greek poets sung of the Nile as the
most venerable of rivers? Had not great Caesar himself been so
fascinated by the idea of discovering its source that to that end--
so he had declared--he would have thought the dominion of the world well
lost? On the produce of those wide fields the weal and woe of the
mightiest cities of the earth had been dependent for centuries; nay,
imperial Rome and sovereign Constantinople had quaked with fears of