By-and-by the doctor turned to her kindly and gently. ‘He’ll do,’ he said, in his most fatherly manner. ‘Go to bed, lass, go to bed, I tell ye. Why, ye’re bruised and beaten yourself too, pretty awkwardly! Ye’ll need rest. Go to bed; an’ he’ll be better, we’ll hope and trust, to-morrow morning.’
‘I won’t go to bed,’ Nora said firmly, ‘as long as I don’t know whether he will live or not, Dr Macfarlane.’
‘Why, my lass, that’ll be a very long watch for ye, then, indeed, I promise you, for he’ll not be well again for many a long day yet, I’m thinking. But he’ll do, I don’t doubt, with care and nursing. Go to bed, now, for there’ll be plenty to guard you. Mr Hawthorn and I will stop here to-night; and there’s neighbours enough coming up every minute to hold the place against all the niggers in the whole of Trinidad. The country’s roused now; the constabulary’s alive; and the governor’ll be sending up the military shortly to take care of us while you’re sleeping. Go to bed at once, there’s a guid lassie.’
Marian took her quietly by the arm and led her away, once more half fainting. ‘You’ll stop with me, dear?’ Nora whispered; and Marian answered with a kiss: ‘Yes, my darling; I’ll stop with you as long as you want me.’
‘Wait a minute,’ the good doctor called out after them. ‘Ye’ll need something to make you sleep after all this excitement, I take it, ladies. There’s nothing in the world so much recommended by the faculty under these conditions as a good stiff glass of old Highland whisky with some lime-juice and a lump of sugar in it.—Ye’ll have some whisky in the house, no doubt, won’t you, Uncle Ezekiel?’
In a minute or two, Uncle ’Zekiel had brought the whisky and the glasses and the fruit for the lime-juice, and Macfarlane had duly concocted what he considered as a proper dose for the young ladies. Edward noticed, too, that besides the whisky, the juice, and the sugar, he poured furtively into each glass a few drops from a small phial that he took out unperceived by all the others from his waistcoat pocket. And as soon as the two girls had gone off together, the doctor whispered to him confidentially, with all the air of a most profound conspirator: ‘The poor creatures wanted a little sedative to still their nerves, I consider, after all this unusual and upsetting excitement, so I’ve just taken the liberty to give them each a drop or two of morphia in their whisky, that’ll make them both sleep as sound as a child till to-morrow morning.’
But all that night, the negroes watched and prayed loudly in their own huts with strange devotions, and the white men and the constables watched—with more oaths than prayers, after the white man’s fashion—armed to the teeth around the open gate of Mr Dupuy’s front garden.
RECENT NOTES FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT.
To those who are interested in ancient Egypt, and to the student of Biblical archæology, the last few weeks have given treasures of discovery. First, there was the unbinding and exposing to view of the mummies of Ramses II. and III., and the identification of that of Queen Nofre-tari; then the discovery, by Mr Flinders Petrie, of ‘El Kasr el Bint el Yahudî’ (the Castle of the Jew’s Daughter), which throws a flood of light upon the few verses in Jeremiah xliii. where we read that Johanan, the son of Kareah, followed by the captains of the forces, the remnant of Judah, and the Hebrew princesses, daughters of the blinded and dethroned Zedekiah, fled to Tahpanhes, the court of Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt. Lastly, there was the interesting meeting of the Egyptian Exploration Fund (see Chambers’s Journal, No. 70), when an account of the finding of the Greek settlement of Naukratis was given, and specimens of the treasures found there were exhibited. To Professor Maspéro we are indebted for the sight of the celebrated Pharaohs; and any one travelling in Egypt should not fail to visit the ‘Hall of the Mummies,’ in the Boulak Museum, near Cairo, where, in glass cases, they will see the faces of these kings exposed to view. First of all, before describing the appearance of the dead monarchs as they emerged from the endless folds of the mummy-cloths, it may be worth while to glance cursorily at their history.
Ramses II.—the Sesostris of the Greeks—was the third king of the nineteenth dynasty. He bears the name of A-naktu, the Conqueror; and in the rolls of the papyri he is also called Ses, Sestura, ‘Sethosis—who is called Ramses’—and Setesu. He was a great builder, and a warrior as well. The land is filled with his buildings and with gigantic statues of himself and his family; and the walls of the temples are covered all over with vivid pictures of his battles and victories. Not only in Egypt are these to be found, but also engraven upon the rock tablets at Berytus, in Syria, are records of his victories in Asia. He does not, however, appear to have allowed his architectural plans and his warlike expeditions wholly to engross his attention, for we find him dividing the land into nomes or provinces, and setting governors over them. He seems to have employed the prisoners of war in making canals for the use of those who lived at a distance from the river. He also rearranged the scale of rents for land, and made the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. In the fifth year of his reign we find him at Kadesh-on-Orontes, a fortified Syrian town: war had broken out with the Khita, a Semitic tribe, who had one of their strongholds there. After a desperate struggle, Ramses appears to have been victorious, and ratified his treaty with the conquered people by marrying their king’s daughter. We find him afterwards waging war in Palestine; and it is certain that he conquered Askelon. He transferred his court to Sân or Zoan, on the Tanitic arm of the Nile, and from thenceforth Pi-Ramses became the seat of government. By many, Ramses II. is thought to be the Pharaoh of the oppression, for whom the children of Israel built the treasure-cities of Pithom and Ramses. Certain it is that during this reign the literature and language of Egypt became impregnated with words borrowed from Semitic sources.