y waterfall,
where we quitted the river for a time, and went a little way overland;
then we took to the river again. This we did four times, and at last,
after more than two months, travelling all the time, we came to a big
town, built all of white stone, very fine to see. All around were green
places like parks, with wells of good water in them; and there were
palm-trees all about, and palaces of white marble; it was a lovely place
for a free man to live in, but for a slave it was dreadful.

"Well, my masters, I was kept here for ten long years, during which I
learnt the language, and found that the city in which I dwelt was named
Khartoum. Then I began to fall ill; I looked old with suffering, and
could not do the tasks allotted to me. I was whipped, and burnt with
red-hot irons; but even such cruelties as these did not make me do any
more work--for indeed I was more dead than alive,--so at last my master
said he would send me down the river to the sea-coast, and sell me there
as a galley-slave, as I was of no more use to him, while I should be
made to work when I was in the galleys. So, with six others in like
condition, I was sent off one morning, in charge of a guard, down the
river, passing on our way six waterfalls or cataracts, as also many
ruined temples and palaces of great age and beauty, with no men in them.

"After nearly two months of travelling, having passed many towns and
villages on the way, we came one morning to a place on the river where
we halted; and away in the desert I could see three great buildings,
broad and square at the bottom, rising to a great height, and
terminating in a point. I asked about them of our captors, and they
told me that they were tombs of ancient kings of Egypt, and of great
age.

"Leaving these, we went on again, and in course of time came to the city
of Alexandria, where our journey ended. We stayed there several weeks,
and then I--being by this time recovered from my sickness,--with the
other six men, was sold to the captain of a corsair galley, who wanted a
few more slaves to make up his complement of rowers.

"And now began the worst years of my life. For six long years, my
masters, I sweated in a hot sun, with no shelter; toiling at the great
heavy sweeps with the other slaves; always kept to our work by the whip
of the bo'sun. Ah, the torment of those years! The recollection of
them would never leave me, were I to live to the age of the patriarchs
of ol