When a comrade, after quitting his ranks, being stimulated by the despair of falling into the hands of the Turks or Arabs, yet once again reared himself from the burning sand, and made a last attempt to stagger after the column, his painful and ineffectual efforts furnished matter for military merriment.

"He is drunk," said one; "his march will not be a long one," answered another; and when he once more sank helpless and hopeless, a third remarked, "our friend has at length taken up his quarters." It is not to be omitted, that Napoleon did, on this occasion, all that became his situation.

He issued an order that every horse should be given up to the service of the sick.

A moment afterwards one of his attendants came to ask which horse the General wished to reserve for himself: "Scoundrel!" cried he, "do you not know the order?
Let everyone march on foot--I the first .-- Begone." He accordingly, during the rest of the march, walked by the side of the sick, cheering them by his eye and his voice, and exhibiting to all the soldiery the example at once of endurance and of compassion.
[_June 14._] Having at length accomplished this perilous journey, Buonaparte repaired to his old headquarters at Cairo, and re-entered on his great functions as the establisher of a new government in the state of Egypt.

But he had not long occupied himself thus, ere new rumours concerning the beys on the Upper Nile, who seemed to have some strong and urgent motive for endeavouring to force a passage downwards, began to be mingled with, and by degrees explained by, tidings daily repeated of some grand disembarkation of the Ottomans, designed to have place in the neighbourhood of Alexandria.