k; and a tub being hurled sideways into
the service, boiling water was procured, and sugar in no ordinary
quantity commingled; and, by the help of a ladle and several chopin
decanters, the whole mass of Egyptian humanity was stirred up into song,
laugh, scream, inebriety, quarrel, battle, stupor, and insensibility.
Our friend Mungo had no objections whatever to the feast, or to the
means by which it was prolonged. He was afterwards notorious for his
drinking habits, insomuch that his observation on this occasion is still
repeated in the neighbourhood of the place of his nativity. When
questioned by the king respecting the size of his native village,
Penpont, his reply was--"It is an exceeding great city." This being
questioned, his proof was equally ingenious, and descriptive of his
habits--"Why, Nineveh took Jonah three days to travel through it,
whereas Penpont generally takes me _seven_." He referred manifestly to
his habit of stopping and drinking at every petty inn and public-house
in the village! The jest told exceedingly in his favour. Mungo, however,
in spite of his losses and crosses, had a noble night of it, as he
afterwards said, with the gipsies, and awakened next morning from his
grassy couch to cool his aching temples in the stream, and restore his
stomach by a hair of the dog that had bit him. He then observed that the
two sons, Duncan and Cuthbert, but not Davie (yclept Donnert, from his
peculiarity of mental constitution), were absent, and that their father
not only exhibited no surprise respecting his sons' absence, but refused
to give any account to his guest of the cause of it. Meanwhile, Mungo
had an opportunity of marking the appearances of the various objects
around him somewhat more distinctly than he had been able to do on the
preceding evening. Blankets, supported by forked poles, old clothes and
rags of every description, formed a kind of nightly shelter for the
common herd; whilst the royal head reposed in the midst of his male
progeny, on the lap of a projecting rock, with a few hare-skins for his
pillow, and a corn-sack for his coverlet. His fair daughter's bedchamber
was somewhat more removed beyond a projecting corner of the winding
linn, and she was protected from observation by the branches of the
overhanging trees being drawn closely down over her, and by what had
once, in all probability, been a soldier's tent, but which was now
miserably rent, and unweather-worthy. It was manifest that