A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

MASSACRE OF THE MEMLOOKS. 65
fully upon til em ; penned in between four walls,
they had no means of defending themselves
against their assailants ; no chance of salvation
remained to these devoted men !
Then
followed
a scene of horror to which no pen can do justice,
and which the imagination shrinks from picturing
to itself. The shrieks of the wounded, the groans
of the dying, the despairing yells of those who,
still unhurt, wildly urged their maddened horses
round and round the court in the vain hope of
finding some issue from the scene of carnage,
mingled in horrible confusion with the clashing
of sabres vainly drawn, the clatter of hoofs, and
the measured report of pistols and musketry,
every shot of which told with dreadful precision,
and brought to the ground horse and rider in
bloody heaps. It was in that awful crisis that
Amyn Bey, one of the Mem look chiefs, pre-
ferring death in any shape, inflicted by himself,
to the cold-blooded butchery that was carrying
on around him, forced his horse up on the para-
pet of the citadel wall, from whence he spurred
him on to take that fearful leap which has con-
ferred such celebrity upon his name, and upon
the spot. The height from which he thus madly
precipitated himself was between thirty and forty
feet from the ground, but it was not a moment
VOL. I. F