18

ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA.

city, containing the great square, many good residences of rich Greeks and Franks, a monastery or two, several churches, baths, gardens, and groves of fine palms. Yet even in many parts of this quarter the heaps of ancient ruins and modern rubbish offend the Western European. The shops in the Frank streets are good, and the English and French languages are spoken, at least a little, by many natives. The English language is most prevalent. Almost every valet de place and Arab courier speaks a little English, learned in the service of some of the many travellers of that nation who frequent the East.

I had now seen the city as it is, and wandered over the ruins of what it had been. Here was the glory of Alexander, the capital of Cleopatra, the grave of Pompey; here Antony lost the world by the intrigues and fascinations of a woman, and Augustus, if the scandal of History be true, wellnigh fell into the same snare; but he triumphed over himself, and won dominion. Here, too, science and literature flourished under the patronage of munificent princes. Here, too, was the emporium of the commerce of the East ere the Christian bark had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and sealed the fate of Alexandria. In this city rose the first great Christian school of theology, illustrated by the genius, but more by the piety, of Origen, who had the splendid misfortune to introduce the Platonic philosophy into Christianity, and thus perplex the Christian world for a thousand years. And from hence went forth subtle, intolerant religious controversy, sprung from a single expression of Arius, raising a question which general councils have in vain endeavoured to determine and settle, and which yet continues to vex the Church.

DEPARTURE FROM ALEXANDRIA.

19

CHAPTER III.

ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO.

Departure from Alexandria.-Camel-drivers.-The Canal.-Atfeh.-Mehemet Ali's Mode of digging Canals.-The Nile.-Appearance of the Country.-Mud Villages on the Nile.-Washerwomen.-Departure from Atfeh. -Getting the wrong Boat.-An uncertain Wind.-Primitive Agriculture.— Boats on the River.-A suspicious Village.-Walks on the Shore.-The Murrain of Cattle.-First Sight of the Pyramids.-Boulak.-Arrival at Cairo.

AT 4 o'clock P. M. our luggage, provisions, and cooking apparatus were collected in the court of the hotel, and a crowd of ragged, vociferous Arabs, with their donkeys and camels, pressed into the great door, and could scarcely be restrained from taking us and our luggage by force. At length they became so violent as to require the interference of the janizary whom the American consul, Mr. Tod, had been so prudent as to send to the hotel without our knowledge, understanding, as I suppose, the difficulty of so many travellers departing at once. Then, for the first time, I saw the force necessary to govern these animals in human shape. The janizary had not only to push them rudely back to prevent them seizing our property and placing it on their camels, but he had to strike them in the face violently; and at length, with his staff of office, to strike them over their heads and shoulders until it seemed to me he would absolutely maim them.

At length two camels received our luggage and provisions, four donkeys ourselves, a fifth Abdallah, our Arab servant, engaged to assist our Greek, and a sixth our Nubian cicerone; and with a runner behind each, servant, cicerone, and all, we set off for the canal, a

mile and a half south of the city, on the shore of the Lake Mareotis. The janizary and courier went to the Custom-house, paid 22 piastres ($1 00) for I know not what, and joined us at our boats. As the sun was setting, we run up our stars and stripes amid the discharge of pistols and the bravo of an old Arab that stood by, loosed our sails, and moved briskly up the wide canal towards Atfeh. The lake was on our right, but not adorned with gardens, vineyards, and villas, as in the days of the Greeks and the Romans: on the left, groves of palms and oranges bordered the canal, imbosoming white country houses of moderate dimensions. A blush of reddish light suffused the western sky, upon which, Pompey's Pillar, for nearly an hour, looked like a dark, well-defined perpendicular line resting on the Desert. The trees and country houses disappeared with the light, and at the same time, a little distance from the canal, a Frank carriage was seen driving rapidly towards the city, preceded by a half naked Arab bounding before it with a flaming torch. We wrapped ourselves up in our new and thickly-wadded quilts, purchased at Alexandria, lay down on some boards in the little cabin, slept soundly, and awoke in the morning at Atfeh. There had been a stiff favourable breeze, and we had run a little more than 60 miles in about eight hours.

The canal through which we sailed is called the Mahmoudie Canal, in honour of the late sultan. Part of it is an ancient work, but it had been choked up for centuries. Mehemet Ali, the present sovereign of Egypt, determined to make Alexandria the commercial capital of his dominions, and of course found it necessary to reopen the canal, in order to transport the products of the country from the Nile to the city. He made a compulsory levy upon the villages in upper and lower Egypt,

and driving the men by thousands, like oxen, to the work, accomplished it in six weeks. Two hundred thousand were employed on it without pay; and their fatigue and exposure in the low, swampy grounds, without shelter, subsisted as they were upon the coarsest food, cut off, some say 20,000, and others as high as 50,000 men. There is not a single lock on the work: it is simply a mud ditch about fifteen feet deep, and always fifty feet wide. The extremity near to Alexandria terminates in the Lake Mareotis, and the other in the Nile at Atfeh, where all produce, merchandise, and passengers are transhipped. When the flood is in the river, the gates are drawn up, and the canal filled; when the water begins to subside, the gates are shut down, and the canal remains full, but without any current. The only loss of water is by leakage and evaporation. The country, as it approaches the Nile, rises gradually, and in order to keep the head of the canal at a low level, so as to be well filled from the river, the cutting is deep, and the mud thrown out lies in irregular piles and ridges like the clay and sand along the deep cuts of our railroads. Part of the village of Atfeh is built on these mud-heaps, chiefly on the right or southern bank of the canal, but the larger and better part lies along the Nile above the canal. The population may be 3000, yet there are no substantial houses in the town: few are two stories high, the much greater number being mud-hovels, without any arrangement of streets, but situated as if by chance, adjoining each other at side or corner, or two, three, four, or five feet apart, as the case may be. There are some French shops on the river, badly supplied with coarse articles at an extravagant price. The native bazar is in the interior of the village, covered over with matting, palm branches, and reeds in a de

22

APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY.

cayed condition. The recent rain had reduced the dust to a thin, elastic mud, through which it was almost impossible to pass. Yet here were coffee-shops, and cooking operations going on, amid selling, eating, and smoking, all in such close proximity to the mud, that the ambling of a donkey amid the crowd sufficed to season the repast with what a European would not like to

taste.

From the elevated position of Atfeh I had the first fair view of Egypt and its mighty river. The last may well be compared with the Rhine near Cologne, or above Mayence, for width and force. Along its mud levee lay a hundred small river-craft, discharging or receiving their loads, or waiting for employment. Groups of graceful palm-trees appeared here and there in the distance, marking the positions of villages, yet the general aspect of the country was silent and desolate. Such we found it as we ascended to Cairo.

The villages usually stand some distance from the river, and are built on artificial elevations apparently formed of rubbish from former towns many times decayed and rebuilt on the same sites through the lapse of centuries. The village huts are scarcely ever more than one low story. The roofs, which are generally covered with mud or reeds, are flat, except when crowned with a somewhat lofty cone or pyramid, built of wide-mouthed earthen jars laid on their sides, their red bottoms appearing outward through the mud in which they are imbedded, and their open mouths turned inward for pigeons' nests. You may often see the jackal-like Egyptian dogs basking in the sun on these flat roofs, to which they can readily leap from the adjacent bank of filth and rubbish, which is ever growing, and will afford the basis of another hut when the existing one shall have crum