page 101.—The scanty rill of Siloah. The sublime Siloah is now a muddy rill; you descend by steps to the fountain which is its source, and which is covered with an arch. Here the blind man received his sight; and, singular enough, to this very day the healing reputation of its waters prevails, and summons to its brink all those neighbouring Arabs who suffer from the ophthalmic affections not uncommon in this part of the world.

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page 102.—Several isolated tombs of considerable size. There are no remains of ancient Jerusalem, or the ancient Jews. Some tombs there are which may be ascribed to the Asmonean princes; but all the monuments of David, Solomon, and their long posterity, have utterly disappeared.

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page 103.—Are cut strange characters and unearthly forms. As at Benihassan, and many other of the sculptured catacombs of Egypt.

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page 104.—A crowd of bats rushed forward and extinguished his torch. In entering the Temple of Dendara, our torches were extinguished by a crowd of bats.

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page 104.—The gallery was of great extent, with a gradual declination. So in the great Egyptian tombs.

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page 105.—The Afrite, for it was one of those dread beings. Beings of a monstrous form, the most terrible of all the orders of the Dives.

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page 106.—An avenue of colossal lions of red granite. An avenue of Sphinxes more than a mile in length connected the quarters of Luxoor and Carnak in Egyptian Thebes. Its fragments remain. Many other avenues of Sphinxes and lion-headed Kings may be observed in various parts of Upper Egypt.

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page 107.—A stupendous portal, cut out of the solid rock, four hundred feet in height, and supported by clusters of colossal Caryatides. See the great rock temple of Ipsambul in Lower Nubia. The sitting colossi are nearly seventy feet in height. But there is a Torso of a statue of Rameses the Second at Thebes, vulgarly called the great Memnon, which measures upwards of sixty feet round the shoulders.

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page 109.—Fifty steps of ivory, and each step guarded by golden lions. See 1st Kings, chap. x. 18-20.

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page 120.—Crossed the desert on a swift dromedary. The difference between a camel and a dromedary is the difference between a hack and a thorough-bred horse. There is no other.

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page 121.—That celestial alphabet known to the true Cabalist. See Note 11.

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page 133.—The last of the Seljuks had expired. The Orientals are famous for their massacres: that of the Mamlouks by the present Pacha of Egypt, and of the Janissaries of the Sultan, are notorious. But one of the most terrible, and effected under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, was the massacre of the Albanian Beys by the Grand Vizir, in the autumn of 1830. I was in Albania at the time.

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page 136.– The minarets were illumined. So, I remember, at Constantinople, at the commencement of 1831 at the departure of the Mecca caravan, and also at the annual fast of Ramadan.

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page 138.—One asking alms with a wire run through his cheek. Not uncommon. These Dervishes frequent the bazaars.

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page 142.—One hundred thousand warriors were now assembled. In countries where the whole population is armed, a vast military force is soon assembled. Barchochebas was speedily at the head of two hundred thousand fighting men, and held the Romans long in check under one of their most powerful emperors.

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page 143.—Some high-capped Tatar with despatches. I have availed myself of a familiar character in Oriental life, but the use of a Tatar as a courier in the time of Alroy is, I fear, an anachronism.

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page 144.—Each day some warlike Atabek, at the head of his armed train, poured into the capital of the caliphs. I was at Yanina, the capital of Albania, when the Grand Vizir summoned the chieftains of the country, and I was struck by their magnificent arrays each day pouring into the city.

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page 153.—It is the Sabbath etc. ‘They began their Sabbath from sunset, and the same time of day they ended it.’—Talm. Hierosolym. in Sheveith, fol. 33, col. I. The eve of the Sabbath, or the day before, was called the day of the preparation for the Sabbath.—Luke xxiii. 54.

‘And from the time of the evening sacrifice and forward, they began to fit themselves for the Sabbath, and to cease from their works, so as not to go to the barber, not to sit in judgment, &c.; nay, thenceforward they would not set things on working, which, being set a-work, would complete their business of themselves, unless it would be completed before the Sabbath came—as wool was not put to dye, unless it could take colour while it was yet day! &c.—Talm. in Sab., par. I; Lightfoot, vol. i. p. 218.

‘Towards sunsetting, when the Sabbath was now approaching, they lighted up the Sabbath lamp. Men and women were bound to have a lamp lighted up in their houses on the Sabbath, though they were never so poor—nay, though they were forced to go a-begging for oil for this purpose; and the lighting up of this lamp was a part of making the Sabbath a delight; and women were especially commanded to look to this business.’—Maimonides in Sab. par. 36.

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Alroy: The Prince of the Captivity

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Alroy: The Prince of the Captivity

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Vivian Grey

A Ward of the Golden Gate

Colonel Starbottle&apos;s Client

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Drift from Two Shores

Frontier Stories

Clarence

The Last Penny and Other Stories

Words for the Wise

Trent&apos;s Trust, and Other Stories

A Waif of the Plains

Flip: A California Romance

Colonel Starbottle's Client

Trent's Trust, and Other Stories