Delaware inquirer. (Wilmington, Del.) 1859-18??, 1860-01-07
VOL. No. SO.

hammedan husband, he left her in charge o
his mother when he could no longer watch owe
her himself, first having removed his hareem t.
n country house in Minieh, and strictly enjoin
ing that there it should remain in complete Sc
clusion during the whole period of his abb
sence.
So far from feeling wounded at the distrus
evinced by these precautions, the fair Nefeesef
| gloried in the jealousy from which they pro-
ceeded for, in common with Mohammedar
wives, she would have conceived herself slight
ed by her husband had he treated her with that
holy confidence which it the pride of a Chris
tian matron to obtain and deserve; and-such
is the moral debasement consequent upon the
system of female education pursued in the East
she would have been wholly unable to dis
tinguish between such a confidence and apathy
the most offensive. Therefore, when Mebrou-
keh her mother-in-law, exclaimed:
| HOh, well hast thou been named Nefeeseh,
my soull for thou art more precious in the
sight of thy husband than every other earthly
| good; and, like the miser who buries his trea-
sure that none else may see it, he would fain
hide thee even from the light of the sun y
Nefeeseh with feeling of exultation at be-
ing thus valued submitted with cheerful
alacrity to the restrictions imposed upon her,
which limited her recreations to rides upon the
homar alec Tor high ass) in the secluded envir-
ons of Minieh, and occasionally a visit to Cairo
to lay q votive offering upon the shrine OF the
Seyyideh zeyneb, and to supplicate for the in
tercessions of the Saint with the Most High for
safety and protection to Masloum Bey.
But scarcely had Ncfeeseh had time to weary
of the monotonous dullness of her existence,
ere Mebroukeh sickened of fever and died,
and the young and inexperienced creature was
left to her own guidance, and to rely upon her.
self alone. At first, the natural sorrow she
felt for the loss of one whom she had both
loved and revered as mother, ABSORBED her
too completely to leave hera thought Tor aught
else-but grief dwells not long with the young
and in few weeks Nefeeseh began to think
that there would be no harm in extending her
rides, and that there were other motives Tor
going out besides praying at the mosque OF the
holy Zeyneb, or carrying palm branches to the
great cemetery that skirts the Desert to adorn
her mother-in-laws grave. But timid and ig-
norant, she knew not how to make use OF the
liberty she had acquired, or to extend the
sphere of her enjoyments; and although each
day she sailed forth with her negress slave
and her Saises, under the superintendent OF
old Hussen, the one-eyed enuch of Mebroukeh'
determined to ride through the gay bazaars
and thoroughfares of Cairo, and to visit the
bareems of her friends, the tyrannizing force OF
habit restrained her, and Involuntary, as II
were, she stopped short at the cemetery, and,
dismounting from her donkey, took her accns-
toned station by the tomb of Mebroukeh.
II is strange, solemn place. that great city
of the dead, SO thickly peoplcd, yet SO silent;
the throng the hum, the thrift of busy CAIRO
nm one side. the awful stiffness of the barren
desert ON the other-ft emblems OF life and
eternity, with the inevitable grave between
Turbaned headstones and white rounded cnpo-
las rise over the thousand tombs that stretch
in dreary confusion along the skirts OF the
desert, each day adding some new habitatlon
to that vast Metropolis; and beyond them,
placed in the desert itself, rise those graceful
monuments of Arabian splendor, the tombs OF
the Memlook sultans, their fretted domes ana
delicate arches and tall minarets clustering IN
airy pomp over the dust of the foreign merce-
naries whose ambition grasped at, and appro-
nriated. the inheritance of the Pharaohs and
the Ptolemies. The very names of the Circas-
sian rulers of Egypt are now almost forgotten
in the land they made their own, even as their
mausolem are fast crumbling into decay. In
another century, dome, and arch, and minaret,
will have mingled with the desert sands and
be swept into oblivion; and the traveller VIII
ride over the lonely spot, needless OF the "hery
DUST once instinct with life, that slumbers
beneath, and never dreaming that under those
heaps of rubbish rest a whole dynasty-a war
like and voluptuous race, who burst the ponds
of slavery, and made themselves kings OF the
antique territory where Joseph governed and
Moses legislatedl
Little thought Nefeeseh of those brilliant
despots as her eyes wandered listlessly over
tlc nirturelquc outlines of their tombs; still
less did she think, or know, of that race OF in
tellectual Ttans who had founded the Great
Pyramids that loomed in the distance. One of
the painful peculiaritics Of the actual race of
Eeyptians is their profound ignorance of the
ancient glorics of their country one OF the hu-
initiating characteristics of Mohammedan wo-
mon in general is their absolute want of all