d by
the co-operation of the host assembled at Rhodes.

Napoleon intended to rally around his standard the Druses of Mount
Lebanon, and all the Christian tribes of Syria, who were anxiously
awaiting his approach, and having established friendly relations with the
Ottoman Porte, to march, with an army of an hundred thousand auxiliaries,
upon the Indus, and drive the English out of India. As England was the
undisputed mistress of the sea, this was the only point where Republican
France could assail its unrelenting foe. The imagination of Napoleon was
lost in contemplating the visions of power and of empire thus rising
before him.

[Illustration: The Dromedary Regiment.]

For such an enterprise the ambitious general, with an army of but ten
thousand men, commenced his march over the desert, one hundred and fifty
miles broad, which separates Africa from Asia. The Pacha of Syria, called
Achmet the _Butcher_, from his merciless ferocity, was execrated by the
Syrians. Napoleon had received delegations from the Christian tribes
entreating him to come for their deliverance from the most intolerable
oppression, and assuring him of their readiness to join his standard. The
English, to divert the attention of Napoleon from his project upon Syria,
commenced the bombardment of Alexandria. He understood the object of the
unavailing attack, and treated it with disdain. He raised a regiment of
entirely a new kind, called the dromedary regiment. Two men, seated back
to back, were mounted on each dromedary; and such was the strength and
endurance of these animals, that they could thus travel ninety miles
without food, water, or rest. This regiment was formed to give chase to
the Arab robbers who, in fierce banditti bands, were the scourge of Egypt.
The marauders were held in terror by the destruction with which they were
overwhelmed by these swift avengers. Napoleon himself rode upon a
dromedary. The conveyance of an army of ten thousand men, with horses and
artillery, across such an apparently interminable waste of shifting sand,
was attended with inconceivable suffering. To allay the despair of the
soldiers, Napoleon, ever calm and unagitated in the contemplation of any
catastrophe however dreadful, soon dismounted, and waded through the
burning sands by the side of the soldiers, sharing the deprivations and
the toils of the humblest private in the ranks. Five days were occupied in
traversing this forlorn waste. Water