Chapter LXV: Conclusion: From the general survey which we have taken of Africa, and (3)

One of the principal objects of attraction is the cathedral of St. John, the patron of the order of the famed Knights of Malta. It was built in 1580. Externally, it is a heavy-looking pile. It has a fine chime of bells, supposed to have been brought from Rhodes, and its internal decorations are rich and beautiful. The floor is mosaic marble pavement, chiefly composed of sepulchral monuments of the knights, whose figures are represented in white marble. The governor now resides in the palace of the Grand Master; it is a fine spacious building, well worthy of attention. The most striking object connected with it is the armory. It contains ten thousand stand of modern infantry arms, fit for immediate use. The most attractive portions of its contents are the arms and suits of armor of the middle ages: some of these are beautifully chased, and inlaid with gold. There is a singular piece of ordnance, an eight or ten pounder, made of a moderately strong tube of sheet-copper, covered over with coils of tarred rope. The gun was really neatly formed, and at first the singular nature of the material of which it was made was not apparent. It seems to have been burst in firing. No great wonder that it should. The library is said, at the time of the expulsion of the knights, to have contained seventy thousand volumes. There are in the palace tables, slabs, vases, and ornaments of various kinds, cut from the marble of Valetta.

The fortifications of Malta are most extensive and intricate; they are connected with the harbors; and on looking at their powers of defense, the mind sinks under the conviction that they are impregnable. Fort St. Elmo, the most massive of these works, contains accommodation for two thousand men. Few things are more dazzling or trying for the eyes than the rocks and buildings around Malta harbor; they are of an intense yellowish-white, without one particle of vegetation to relieve them. The waters of the harbor are singularly pure, so that the bottom is distinctly visible to the depth of thirty or forty feet. The Parlettario is the favorite resort for quarantine-bound passengers. It is a long narrow room, near the anchorage, divided by a barrier, where the gold and silver filagree-work, for which Malta is famous, is sold. Here also are shell cameos, bracelets, and brooches in mosaic, and a vast variety of bijouterie. The Maltese females are celebrated for the skill and delicacy with which they embroider in gold and colored silks, as well as for the beauty of the knit silk gloves, etc., which they manufacture; and on these a good deal of money is usually expended in the Parlettario for the benefit of friends at home.

There is a tradition that, from the time of the visit of St. Paul, Malta has been devoid of serpents or other poisonous reptiles. During our stay, we had evidence of the baselessness of the tradition――having seen a snake killed by a soldier on duty close by his sentry-box. It was about three feet long, of a dingy brown, and had very much the hue and aspect of the common cobra. We had no means of determining whether it was poisonous or not. Close by the anchorage were several sentry stations, and the neat economical penthouse with which the soldier was protected from the sun, struck me as particularly suitable for India. It is a light wooden stand, not unlike a music stand in shape, with a movable board, which can be fixed at any degree of angle, to shelter the sentinel from the sun. Without such a protection in summer, the poor soldier would soon be broiled to death.

So many days had been lost in the storm after leaving Gibraltar, that the time allowed us at Malta was limited to eight hours. We quitted the shore at four o’clock, and were on board as speedily as possible. The Oriental Steam Navigation Company had at this time but one vessel for the Bombay mail, as it is called, which plies constantly betwixt Malta and Alexandria――the _Iberia_. She is of five hundred tons burden, with engines of two hundred horse-power; a clever-going, clean, tidy little ship, with one of the most kind-hearted, attentive, and obliging captains that can be. And here I may be permitted a few passing remarks on the _Tagus_ and _Iberia_, in which both my voyages were performed, belonging to the lighter class of the Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s ships. The Tagus is a fine powerful vessel, of nine hundred tons and three hundred horse-power, well kept, and a stout sea-boat. Nothing can surpass the politeness and attention of her officers; and the whole attendance has that air of thorough respectability which imparts so much confidence, and assures so much comfort, to the passengers――contrasting strikingly in the latter with the ragamuffianly crew which, on the Suez side, constitutes the servants in the government steamers. The Oriental Company give high pay to their servants, so as to make their service eminently desirable. They keep the establishment always fully employed; the heaviest punishment that can be inflicted on either seaman or servant is dismissal, with the assurance that he will never be employed by them again. The provisioning of the vessel is let out to a provider, who receives five shillings a-day for each passenger: the officers have nothing to do with it, but to see that everything is abundant and of the best.

We had a beautiful run of six days from Malta to Alexandria; our voyage bringing us within the farther limits of the Mediterranean, known as the Levant. The time occupied from Southampton to Alexandria was about twenty days, including stoppages.

EGYPT. The land around Alexandria is so low, that it does not come into sight till we are quite close to the harbor of Alexandria; but some time previously, we observe rising, as it were, out of the sea, the windmills, Pompey’s Pillar, the Lighthouse, and Cleopatra’s Needle, with several towers and minarets. From the town westward to the Lake Mareotis, for the space of nearly a mile, the sand hillocks by the shore are literally covered with windmills. I counted about two hundred. The turrets are about thirty feet high in all, the length of the arms about twenty feet, breadth of sail three to three and a half feet. They have eight vanes each; and as they are set different ways, and so move in opposite directions in different mills, when tossing their arms in the wind, they look like a set of sea-monsters sprawling about on the shore, and striving to regain their native element. They are all employed in grinding wheat; and though rugged and rude enough in appearance, are in reality simple and efficient implements. They employ a single pair of stones, made either of French bhurr or vesicular lava from Sicily. They have no sifting or bolting apparatus: the ground wheat is received from the stones in a sack, and the flower afterwards dressed through a fine gauze sieve by the hand. I visited several of them, with a view to the introduction of a similar species of machine into India.

On landing at Alexandria, the traveler now feels that he is fairly out of Europe. He may have seen a stray and stunted palm-tree or two at Gibraltar or Malta, with here and there a Turk or Arab in his native dress: these last, indeed, may be met with in the streets of London. At Alexandria all the costumes are Oriental, European residents mostly dressing like Turks. Vast groves of magnificent date-trees, far surpassing in beauty those to be met with in Western India, stretch away in all directions. Long strings of camels are employed in carrying merchandise. The women are all veiled――covered over with that unsightly blue vestment which conceals the person and the face, leaving a pair of little holes for the eyes to peep through. Formerly it was the custom for passengers from the steam-packets to place themselves on the backs of donkeys, in order to get through the streets. This is all changed now, and the traveler finds a large and roomy van ready for his convenience.

The great square of Alexandria, where most of the European inhabitants reside, has a singularly fine and pleasing appearance, though without anything of which the architect can boast. The houses are built of whitish limestone, like Bathstone, only here the walls remain pure as when erected――taking no tarnish from the weather. In the centre is an obelisk of the yellowish-white Cairo marble, which surmounts a fountain. The residences of the consuls around the square are each surmounted by a flag-staff, on which on gala-days the ensigns of their respective nations are displayed. The French consul has a strange-looking corkscrew staircase surrounding his, and leading to a watch-tower which overlooks the town. Many of the sign boards of the shopkeepers, especially of the apothecaries, are painted with Greek characters. Here are situated the principal hotels, and hence diverge streets to all parts of the town.

Alexandria was originally built in the form of a Madonian mantle, with its longer side to the sea. At one time it contained a population of above half a million, of which half were slaves. It boasted of four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews. Its public libraries are said to have contained seven hundred thousand volumes of books. It was accidentally destroyed by fire during the war with the Romans in Cæsar’s time. Ages of misrule under Saracens, and latterly under Turks, fell like a blight on everything in Alexandria, as on everything else in Egypt: and not until the era of Mehemet Ali, the present vigorous ruler, did the country show any symptom of revival. Since the beginning of the present century, the population of Alexandria has increased from seven thousand to seventy thousand. With its harbor and docks, it now possesses the appearance of a thriving port.

Vestiges of the ancient splendor of Alexandria are everywhere to be found. Fragments of richly-sculptured columns, of architraves, cornices, and other portions of architectural ornament, are to be seen strewed about in every quarter of the city――broken up for lime or for paving-stones, and built into the meanest houses. Huge shafts of granite are continually disclosed, half buried amongst the rubbish or the sand; and the mounds of ruins are in many cases one mass of porphyries, granites, verde-anticoes, and marbles, brought from Upper Egypt or the south of Europe. In the course of a few hours I picked up some hundred specimens of thirty different varieties of the stones I have named, which required only a little polishing to restore to them their lustre. Mosaics, and pieces of ancient glass, are also abundant; the latter marked by that iridescent semi-metallic hue which indicates decay through extreme lapse of time. The sights of Alexandria are Pompey’s Pillar, Cleopatra’s Needle, the Catacombs, the pasha’s palace, and the battle-field where Abercromby fell; the Lake Mareotis, of which a distant view usually satisfies the traveler; and the canal. Pompey’s Pillar stands on an eminence about six hundred yards from the present walls of the town, close beside the road which leads from the Rosetta Gate to the Mahmoudyè Canal. The total height of the column is ninety-eight feet. The shaft, which is a single block of red granite or syenite, is nine feet eight inches in diameter, and seventy-three in length. It is now shown to have been erected by Publius, the prefect of Egypt, in honor of the Emperor Dioclesian. It probably was only put in its place when it is said to have been erected, forming most likely a portion of some of the more ancient and noble relics of Egypt. Cleopatra’s Needles are at the opposite extremity of the town: they consist of two obelisks, one prostrate and one erect, of the same material as the column. One is seventy, the other sixty-five feet high, and about seven feet in diameter at the base. They stood originally at Heliopolis, and were brought to Alexandria by one of the Cæsars. Both are covered with hieroglyphics.

The Lake of Mareotis is one of the curiosities of the neighborhood of Alexandria, and is situated a short way beyond the Rosetta Gate. This lake, which is about a hundred and fifty miles in circumference, was originally fresh-water; and being about five or six feet deep, it answered the purpose of navigation. In consequence of its connexion with the Nile being cut off, its waters were wholly dried up, or nearly so; and in this condition it was eighty or ninety years since. An entire change followed. It is divided from the sea by mounds of sand, blown up from the shore, and its bottom is several feet lower than the level of the Mediterranean. Thus exposed to the danger of submersion, it was resolved, during the siege of Alexandria in 1788, to let in upon it the waters of the ocean. It was certain to produce a wide-spread calamity; but when did the demon War stop to consider results? Four cuts were made, each of six yards in width, and ten distant from each other. The water rushed in with a fall of six feet. Two more cuts were finished next day, and the sea finally broke down the divisions. What a scene of devastation! The sea flowed in for a week. The calamity was fearful. The sites of three hundred villages were flooded, and rendered barren for ever. The bank was afterwards closed up again, and the communication with the sea cut off; but the basin of the lake being lower than the surface of the sea, and the Mediterranean here being without tide, there was no means of drawing off the salt water. It was by degrees in a great measure evaporated by the sun, leaving a vast expanse of once fertile surface covered with a dazzling snow-white sheet of salt. In this condition I examined it in June 1845. The Nile is admitted annually to it at flood, and the lake then reappears; but the returning dry season only restores the condition previously existing. Nor does there appear to be any remedy for this, until the successive depositions of silt from the river accumulate sufficiently to raise the bottom of the lake to a level with the sea――an operation only to be effected through some vast and very indefinite lapse of time. Till then, the salt must always mingle with the fresh-water silt deposited every year. Could rice or any grain be grown on it, as in India, which flourishes even on saline grounds, the process of recovery would of course be greatly accelerated. The lake formerly communicated by a canal with a port of Old Alexandria.

In various masses of rock, composed of oölitic limestone, adjacent to the lake and near the town, are a number of curious catacombs, and other ancient works of art, including a variety of mosaics. South of the city are several high mounds, likewise interesting from the relics of ancient art found imbedded in them. The bricks used for building in Alexandria are those excavated from the ruins of the ancient city: they are quarried in abundance in all directions. They are well-formed, and excellently burnt; and so perfectly cemented together, that it is often more difficult to break the hardened mortar than the material it unites. The potter’s wheel of Alexandria is a singular one: it consists of a spindle about two feet long, turning in a socket some one and a half feet under the level of the floor, and a collar about three inches from the upper extremity. The circular disk on which the ware is thrown is of course above this last. The wheel is turned at the rate of about two revolutions a second, by a circular flange some one and a half feet in diameter just above its lower insertion. The potter sits on the floor, his legs in a small pit below the wheel, shuffling with his feet on the flange just mentioned, and so making the wheel revolve. It is certainly the most awkward-looking implement by much that I have seen for the purpose. Yet the ware turned out is good, strong, well-shaped, and is afterwards thoroughly burned in kilns.

Admission to the pasha’s palace may be procured by an order from the vakeel, or steward. It is a neat, but plain and unpretending building. The view from it is beautiful. The rooms are handsome, and well-proportioned and arranged; and the floors, of inlaid brightly-polished wood, have a very pleasing effect.

Travelers for India usually hurry through Egypt, with the view of not losing the steamboat, which is ready for them at Suez. But as there are two steamers a-month, those who have time and money to spare, may occupy themselves very delightfully in spending a fortnight on the journey. The conveyance of travelers from Alexandria to Suez is effected by the pasha, at an expense of £12. This charge includes everything save liquors and hotel bills of all kinds at Cairo, which fall on the passenger, and frequently amount to 15s., or £1. All charges of this class seem in Egypt extortionately high, and are indeed out of all proportion to tavern bills in Europe. But then it must be remembered that the whole establishments are permanently maintained, for the sake of employment, one day in fourteen; that unless when the passengers are on the way, the innkeepers are wholly idle. And now the arrangements hurry every one so fast, that they can only get some half-dozen hours of even the passengers, desiring to saddle them with the expenses incurred on their account during the interval when the house is open for the reception of guests, but when there are no guests to be received. Having arranged matters at the Transit Office, the traveler is duly informed of the hour when the vans quit the hotel, and should make the best of his time in the interval. The vans proceed to the place of embarkation, about two miles distant, on the Mahmoudyè Canal. The luggage is forwarded beforehand on camels, a carpet-bag being all that is allowed――it is all, indeed, that is requisite――for each individual to carry along with him.

The road to the canal leads through the great square already described, and on to the Rosetta Gate――an old ragged fragment of the fortifications of the town. And here, to his astonishment, the traveler finds that Alexandria is being fortified, after the manner of Paris, with walls, and bastions, and ditches, and all the other contrivances of military engineership. The works are being constructed on the recommendation of the French, and under the superintendence of French engineers. A quarter of a century in time, and some millions of money, may be allowed for their completion, the miserable starving population being taxed for this useless and wanton waste. Passing onward, the road leads close to the elevation on which stands Pompey’s Pillar. Not far to the left is the battle-field where Sir Ralph Abercromby fell.

The Mahmoudyé Canal connects Alexandria with Atfèh, a navigable point on the Nile. This important public work was begun in 1819, and completed in little more than six months, having been opened on the 24th of January 1820. It is forty-eight miles in length, ninety feet across, and about eighteen feet in depth. For a long distance, the banks of the canal are ornamented on one side by neat villas, with most beautiful shrubberies and flower-gardens in front of them. The little kiosks, or summer-seats, consisting in a circle of benches, shadowed by lofty trees, almost hang over the banks. The canal is nowhere strait, and passes along a country so perfectly level, that locks are not required. One only exists at Atfèh. As many as a hundred and fifty thousand people are said to have been employed in the excavation of the canal: the inhabitants of all the villages in Lower Egypt were marched down to the stations respectively assigned to them, one month’s pay having been advanced to enable them to supply themselves with provisions. The assemblage of so enormous a multitude, which would have formed a double line from end to end of the canal, had they stood as close as possible to each other, was sure to be productive of fatal results; and accordingly twenty thousand are understood to have perished on the occasion. Provisions ran scanty, many fell victims to starvation, and pestilence swept many more away. Two-thirds of them were without tools or clothing of any kind whatever, groping up the mud, and lifting it out with their hands. The last portion of this statement appeared to myself incredible, until I had seen people engaged in cleaning out a portion of an old canal near the Lake Mareotis. They dug with their hands into the soft mud, until a portion about a cubic foot in size was detached; this was passed on to the nearest workman, and so conveyed by others to the bank. Not one vestige of implement or attire was possessed, or apparently desired by them.

The banks of the canal are sufficiently high to intercept the view of the adjoining country, so that, after passing the villas already alluded to, there is really nothing to be seen. A good sailing-boat traversed the distance in eight hours; one, tugged by horses, in ten. A small high-pressure steamer is presently employed, which goes snort, snorting along at the rate of about five miles an hour. The boats containing the passengers and luggage are towed behind. We started at half-past six, and were no less than eleven hours on the canal, reaching Atfèh on the Nile at half-past five. It has always been my fortune to pass this filthy little village late at night, or early in the morning, so as scarcely to be able to see it, and the matter did not seem entitled to excite much regret. On reaching the Nile, the traveler finds a neatly-kept and commodious steamer awaiting him――not very roomy, but such as passengers, if not numbering more than fifty, may put up with without much discomfort. In going up the Nile, several large works for assisting the irrigation of the country are passed.

One who has examined the magnificent specimens of grain now grown in England, is exceedingly disappointed on examining that for which Egypt, for thirty centuries, has been famous. I collected many specimens in 1840: it is exceedingly prolific on the root, but not more so than grain at home thinly sown on rich soil. The stalks of the barley are seldom above eighteen or twenty inches long; each root produces from six to twenty-five stems, fifteen being about the average. There are six rows of grains or pickles on each stalk, each row containing at an average about ten grains, so that the return from the seed in from six to nine hundred. The roots are from six to fourteen inches from each other, and I do not believe that an acre of land in Egypt will yield nearly so much grain, by measure or weight, as a similar surface in England――both under present cultivation. The barley itself, when rubbed out, would have been little short of unsaleable in average season at home, so thin, husky, and poor it was. It is trampled out of the straw by oxen, and cleared of chaff by the wind. The straw is chopped or cut up into what we in India call boosa, by an implement closely resembling a turnip-sowing harrow, drawn over it by oxen, each roller being armed with three or four circular cutters. The crop which most surprises by its abundance is tobacco, vast fields of which extend in all directions. Nor is it to be wondered at that the cultivation of this narcotic should rival in extent that of grain, or roots, or fruits for human food. In Egypt, every man who can afford it smokes at every hour of the day. The dull and watery eye, the want of energy and enterprise apparent in all, tell too plainly how the drug is doing its work. It is sad to see Englishmen reducing themselves to the level of Turks, as is too often the case, by the filthy and degrading practice of everlasting smoking. A singular variety of raft, consisting of a framework of slight sticks, buoyed up by a vast number of earthen pots, is frequently to be seen on the Nile. They appear to be chiefly employed in carrying coarse earthenware down the river.

From the moment of arrival in Egypt, we feel that we are in a country possessing many relics of the past; but this feeling cannot be said to exist in perfect force till we approach Cairo, which is the threshold of all the great marvels of ancient art. Those who have not before sailed up the Nile, watch for the first appearance of the pyramids. These become suddenly visible about forty miles below Cairo; and the cry that they are in sight, renders the spectator almost breathless with anxiety to discover them. They are seen far across the desert breaking the western horizon, and seem at this enormous distance almost as large as when looked at from Cairo. Here the desert sand has fairly drifted over the fertile soil, and is blown in masses into the river. The banks of the Nile, indeed, show that this has been an event of frequent occurrence since silt began to accumulate, alternate beds of sand and mud being visible all down a section of ten to fifteen feet of bank. The sand examined through a magnifier, is of a yellowish smoke color, sharp and angular, often of a pretty regular cubical form. It looks like the quartz portions of disintegrated granite, which it probably is.

The banks of the Nile, which have been hitherto dull and uninteresting, become exceedingly striking as we approach Boulac, which is in the vicinity of Cairo. Long lines and groups of trees skirt the left bank of the river. Amongst some half-dozen of beautiful acacias, the magnificent golden flowers of the _acacia fistula_ stand conspicuous. The tree receives its name from the seed-pod being of the form and size of an ordinary fife: the flower is something like that of the laburnum, with each branch five or six times the size of those of the latter tree. Then come the gardens and pleasure-grounds around the palace of Shoubra. The island of Rhoda, a garden nearly altogether, divides and half fills up the river in front. The beautiful weeping-willow of Egypt――most graceful and lovely of its loveliest of races――is conspicuous everywhere. The long sweeping yards of the lateen-sailed boats of the Nile, sometimes not less than sixty feet in length, shoot up by the shore. Just beyond are the large cotton-mills and other works of the pasha, intruding English steam-engines, and huge chimney stalks, which, though striking enough as contrasts, seem here eminently out of place. Sweeping along the eastern horizon, at a distance of two miles, is the Citadel, with the vast city and countless minarets of Grand Cairo. On the other or right side but two objects present themselves to the eye――the desert and the pyramids: and they are enough.

The voyage up the Nile, extending to 120 miles from Atfèh, occupied from eighteen to nineteen hours, and was brought to a close at Boulac. Here travelers disembark, and go to Cairo by vans provided on purpose. The drive to the city is by no means over a good road; but being through fields and gardens, the scene is everywhere most rich and beautiful. ‘All, save the _spirit_ of man is divine;’ saving, it may be added, his habitations and his fleshly tenements. More wretched hovels than are the houses, more squalid wretches than are the people, cannot be conceived. Crossing various canals and gardens, and threading some beautiful avenues of trees, the traveler at length reaches the great square of Grand Cairo, and the picture presented is sufficiently striking. There is nothing in the way of building which deserves the name of fine architecture; but the houses are lofty and picturesque, and of every conceivable shape and size――tall graceful minarets shooting up in all directions. The Hotel d’Orient the principal one in Cairo, is in the great square, and is a large and very showy building, though the establishment and style of living is somewhat too French for an Englishman’s taste. There is an excellent, though less conspicuous, English tavern close by. The area enclosed by the great square is surrounded by a very wide and deep ditch, which is filled with water during the inundation: fine rows of acacia-trees skirt it on both sides, and form a double avenue along the road which intersects it. Vast crowds of people are at all times in the neighborhood, and here almost alone in Cairo there is abundant room for observing the passers-by. It is indeed almost the only open space in this vast city, the thoroughfares of which consist of narrow lanes, hardly anywhere deserving the name of streets. The houses are so high, and the balconies above project so far, that it is often difficult to obtain a glimpse of the sky above. They are almost everywhere crowded most densely with people. Nimble donkeys, with jingling bells, trot rapidly along, threading their way with extraordinary dexterity through the multitude. Lines of huge camels, with vast burdens on their sides, bear down upon you, threatening to close up the pathway, and arrest the progress of the living current. Contrasted with all this activity and bustle, is the profound composure of the shopkeepers, who, in the richest dresses, and with long flowing beards, recline beside their wares, smoking their hookas, or long cherry-stalked, amber-mouthed pipes, as in a state of the most apathetic unconcern. I have rarely seen so large a proportion of fine-looking men as are to be found thus occupied in many of the bazaars.

We reached Cairo at eight o’clock in the morning, and were told that the first set of vans would set off for Suez at eleven, and the last at four o’clock in the afternoon. To those who propose going forward, there is little time to spare. Some of our party, however, who were active, were able to traverse the city, to inspect the palace of the pasha, and to enjoy the magnificent view from the battlements of the Citadel. They also had a little time to spend on shopping at the silk embroidery and perfumery bazaars, and to purchase some memorials of their stay; to visit the reading-rooms and museum of the Egyptian Society――the valuable collection of Dr. Abbot being one of the richest and most interesting in Egypt.

Cairo is said to contain a population of two hundred thousand inhabitants: it stands on a plateau about forty feet above the level of the Nile, and on the edge of the Desert. The Citadel is one of the most prominent objects of attraction, and can be examined however short almost may be the traveler’s stay. It was built about the year 1171, by the Caliph Yoosef Saláh-è-deen, well known in the history of the Crusaders as ‘the Magnificent Saladin.’ A long ride through narrow, crowded, and irregular lanes, past numerous mosque of great magnitude and beauty, leads to the bottom of the steep winding ascent, at the extremity of which is the gate of the fortress. The first object of attraction which it contains is a magnificent mosque, which has now been ten years in process of construction. It is still incomplete. It consist of an open square, surrounded by a single row of thirty-five columns. In the centre of this is a superb fountain, and on the east a lofty gate leads to the inner part of the house of prayer. I do not know to what variety of architecture the building can be referred. I cannot concur with Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, that its attractions are due more to the beauty of the material of which it is constructed than to the skill displayed in the structure itself. To me it seemed in this latter respect supremely beautiful; not the less so because of the extent to which it departed from anything known to us of Greek, Roman, Gothic, or even of Indian art. The extreme richness of its decorations partake nothing of tediousness――they are all symmetrical, tasteful, and beautiful. I do not even know that the effect is heightened by the burnished brass mouldings which surrounded the base of the capital and top of the basement of the column, though this sort of combination of metal and stone is one of the most unusual in masonry. The walls, which consist of the common building-stone of Cairo, are everywhere crusted over with a yellowish-white variegated horny-colored marble. It is brought from a considerable way across the country, having been discovered some fourteen years since at a place called Wadee Moähut, about seventy miles from the Nile, and is a travertine, or fresh-water limestone, deposited from springs. The undulations and coatings of the deposit form beautiful markings in the marble; it is unfortunately not susceptible of a very high polish, and is often defaced by small angular crevices, which, however, cease to be observable a few yards off. It is brought in large blocks from the quarry, and sawn into slices beside the building. The magnificent granite columns which formerly surrounded Joseph’s Hall are lying prostrate around. They were pulled down in 1827, to make room for the mosque, and were in all likelihood originally the fragments of some of the noble works of Egypt’s splendor in its earlier days. They are of the same material as that of which Pompey’s Pillar and Cleopatra’s Needle are composed. Just beyond the mosque is the palace and harem of the pasha――a neat, plain building, more richly than tastefully fitted up and furnished within, but quite worthy of examination. The Mint is beyond this; and near by is Joseph’s Well, an excavation two hundred and sixty feet in depth, a winding staircase leading to the bottom. The reader must be reminded that the Joseph here referred to is not the Hebrew patriarch, though commonly imagined to be such, but the famous Sultan Saladin, by whom the works were constructed.

From the palace garden may be seen the spot where Emir Bey leaped his horse over the wall, to escape the massacre which awaited his brother Mamelukes on the 1st of March 1811. Mohammed Ali had prepared an expedition into Arabia, to chastise the Wahabees, who had robbed and murdered the pilgrims on their way to Mecca. The Mamelukes, impatient of his curtailment of their power, resolved to avenge and liberate themselves by the overthrow of his government. Their secret was badly kept, and the pasha was informed of the plot hatching against him. He pretended to disbelieve it altogether, and treated it as a slander against the Mamelukes. His preparations being completed, he invited all his courtiers and chiefs to the Citadel, to be present at the investiture of his son with authority to be exercised during his absence. The beys of the Mamelukes were received with the usual courtesy; but on their retirement, found the gates shut against them, while volleys of musketry were poured in on them from every side. Horses and riders fell in heaps. It is said that four hundred and forty were slaughtered in the court, Emir Bey alone escaping. He remembered that a heap of rubbish thrown over the wall, had accumulated to a considerable height near its base. He leaped his horse over: the animal was dashed to pieces, but the rider escaped. He found shelter in the tents of some soldiers near, and succeeded in making his way to Constantinople. He survived till within these few years. The beautiful aqueduct seen from the Citadel was originally built by Saladin the Magnificent in 1171, for the purpose of bringing water from the Nile to supply the garrison: it was renewed and enlarged in 1518.

Before requesting the reader to accompany me on the route eastward to Suez, I shall pause to describe some things which I visited and felt interested in on the occasion of my previous visit to Cairo.

THE NILE――PYRAMIDS. Egypt, as is well known, consists of the fertile valley of the Nile, and a strip of desert on each side. The Nile, formed by streams coming out of Abyssinia on the south, is about 1500 miles in length; at certain places it forms rapids, or sloping cataracts, and at other points encloses islands, interesting for their beauty or the ruins which remain upon them. The remarkable phenomenon connected with the Nile, is its annual overflow of the banks which border it――an event looked for with as much certainty as the daily rising of the sun. These inundations of the Nile are owing to the periodical rains which fall between the tropics. They begin in March, but have no effect upon the river until three months later. Towards the end of June it begins to rise, and continues rising at the rate of about four inches a-day, until the end of September, when it falls for about the same period of time. The towns are generally built in such a situation and manner as not to be overflowed by the inundation, and in some parts of the country there are long raised causeways, upon which the people may travel during the floods. It is only in cases of an extraordinary rise that any villages are destroyed. The inundations, instead of being viewed as a calamity, are considered a blessing, for they are the cause of inexhaustible fertility. After the waters have subsided, the earth is found covered with mud, which has been left there by the river. This mud, which is principally composed of argillaceous earth and carbonate of lime, serves to fertilize the overflowed land, and is used for manure for such places as are not sufficiently saturated by the river; it is also formed into bricks, and various vessels for domestic use. The whole valley of the Nile may be considered as an alluvial plain, formed of the washed-down mud and sand of Central Africa, and it is therefore to these inundations that Egypt owes its existence.

Notwithstanding the overflow of the Nile, the atmosphere of Egypt is extremely dry and healthful. During our winter, the climate of Egypt is delightful. The inhabitants speak with intense affection of the Nile, for to it they owe the verdure of their fields, their food, their drink, and the cotton for their clothing. In its taste the water is delicious and salubrious.

The Pyramids are situated about ten miles from Cairo, in a western direction, and consequently on the farther side of the Nile. The traveler may now have the benefit of a carriage for the journey: formely, the only conveyance was by donkeys. The road leads by Old Cairo, a decayed suburb of Cairo, at two miles’ distance, on the banks of the river. The Nile is forded or crossed in boats at the upper end of the island of Rhoda. When within a couple of miles of the end of the journey, a number of frightful-looking Bedouins commonly make a rush from a large village a little way off, as if intent on mischief. They are men anxious to be employed as guides; and they had better be employed at once, to save further annoyance.

The Pyramids scarcely appear to increase in size until you are close up to their base; then their bulk seems enormous, and the distance betwixt one and the other looks like a forenoon’s journey. They are four in number in one view――three large, and one small――and are usually known as the Pyramids of Gizeh. They stand on a plateau some forty feet above the plain, and are fairly within the Desert. I do not believe any one who has not visited them has a correct idea of their vast dimensions. The present base of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, as it is called, is 746 feet each way; the mass is estimated at eighty-five millions of cubic feet, and covers an area of eleven acres. Measured by the slope, its height is 611 feet, and its perpendicular height is 461 feet, being 117 feet higher than St. Paul’s, London. The age of the Pyramids is unknown, but it cannot be less than three thousand years. And what a waste of human labor in their construction! A hundred thousand men, changed every three months, for twenty years, are said by the Greek writers to have been occupied in their erection!

At a distance, the Pyramids appear to be tolerably smooth and pyramidal; but on coming close to them, they are found to have a ragged and half-ruined aspect, in consequence of the outer coating of stones and plaster having been removed. Their sides in this rough state present the appearance of a series of steps, composed of huge blocks of yellowish-white limestone. The ascent is toilsome, but I made a point of reaching the top of the Great Pyramid. The ledges of stone are uncomfortably high for a stair; and ladies meaning to ascend, should provide themselves with a footstool, which the guides could lift and hand up to them at each step. There are altogether 206 tiers of stone, from one to four feet high. At length we reached the top, which is an irregular platform, thirty-two feet square; the stones constituting the apex having been thrown down. On gaining this lofty eminence, on which there was room to move about, I felt an extraordinary exhilaration of spirits, not only from the effect of historical associations, but from the remarkable fineness of the atmosphere. The view on all sides was magnificent. One of its most striking features is the distinctness of the line which divides the fertile region from the Desert. There is no middle ground――no debateable land, over which fertility and desolation, the sand of Sahara and the silt of the Nile, alternately hold sway. So far as the influence of the Nile extends, all is verdure; the moment the sand begins, utter waste ensues.

Having satisfied our curiosity, the party descended; but all found that coming down was a vast deal more fatiguing and dangerous than going up. However, we got to the bottom in safety; and being pretty well appetized, we adjourned to luncheon in a sort of cave close by, where victuals we had brought with us were enjoyed. It is necessary to make this provision for refreshment, because there is no house, tent, or village in the neighborhood. The Great Pyramid is not entirely solid. An entrance has been made, by which a series of labyrinthian passages and chambers have been discovered. The entrance is on the north side; but we did not feel inclined to enter; for the journey in some places requires to be performed on hands and knees. At the centre are two chambers of red granite, in one of which is a sarcophagus; and here is supposed to have slept one of the great rulers of the earth, the king of what was the greatest kingdom of the earth, the proud mortal for whom this mighty structure was raised.

The ascent of the second Pyramid is seldom attempted by visitors: it is much more difficult than that of the first, especially over that portion of the smooth granite crust which still remains about thirty feet down. It is of somewhat less magnitude than the other, but looks as large, from standing on higher ground. The third of the group is considerably smaller. The fourth I did not visit. In the neighborhood of these grand objects of antiquity lie scattered about many interesting remains. The most attractive of these is the Sphinx――a gigantic figure, half-woman, half-lion, nearly all hewn from the solid rock, the fore-legs and part of the back only being built. There is an altar between the two paws, on which sacrifices appear to have been offered. From the lower part of the body to the top of the head, the Sphinx measures 66 feet, the recumbent portion 102, the paws 50, and the circumference of the head 100 feet. Such has been the drifting of the sands, that the whole figure is now covered except the head and a portion of the dilapidated neck.

A few miles above the Pyramids of Gizeh once stood Memphis, a city as large and flourishing as Alexandria, but now utterly destroyed, and the very ruins hardly distinguishable. Continuing the journey up the valley of the Nile, and within the distance of two hundred miles, the traveler passes the ruins of many decayed cities, now reduced to miserable villages of half-starving Arabs, but once the glory of Egypt. Among these are Arsinöe, Dendera, Thebes, Karnac, Edfou, Elephantina, and Philöe. Edfou is thus described by Mr. Stephens:――‘At one corner of this miserable place stands one of the magnificent temples of the Nile. The propylon (or gateway), its lofty proportions enlarged by the light of the moon, was the most grand and imposing portal I saw in Egypt. From a base of nearly 100 feet in length, and 30 in breadth, it rises on each side of the gate in the form of a truncated pyramid, to the height of 100 feet, gradually narrowing, till at the top it measures 75 feet in length and 18 in breadth. Judge, then, what was the temple to which this formed merely the entrance; and this was far from being one of the large temples of Egypt. It measured, however, 440 feet in length and 220 in breadth, about equal to the whole space occupied by St. Paul’s Churchyard. Its dromos, pronaos, columns, and capitals, all correspond; and enclosing it is a high wall, still in a state of perfect preservation. I walked round it twice, and, by means of the wall erected to exclude the unhallowed gaze of the stranger, I looked down upon the interior of the temple. Built by the Egyptians for the highest uses to which a building could be dedicated――for the worship of their gods――it is now used by the pasha as a granary and storehouse.’

Few travelers proceed farther up the Nile than Philöe, as the journey through Nubia is less safe or agreeable than that within the Egyptian territory. Yet without a visit to the Nubian valley of the Nile, which extends to near the head branches of the river in Abyssinia, much of the ancient grandeur of this part of the world will remain unexplored. Nubia, which is at present a Turkish province, subject to the pasha of Egypt, is frequently called by the name Ethiopia――from the black complexion of whose inhabitants the term Ethiopian came in early times to signify one who is black, or a negro. This country of Nubia, or Ethiopia, is understood by some historians to have enjoyed a degree of civilization and refinement in art at a date even earlier than Egypt; and till the present day, it possesses pyramids and other monuments of architectural skill as wonderful, in the eyes of the traveler, as those in the lower divisions of the Nile.

So much for a glance at the archaeological treasures of Egypt; let us now return to Cairo, in order to undertake an excursion which has been seldom performed.

THE PETRIFIED FOREST. This extraordinary curiosity is situated eight or ten miles south from Cairo, and is reached by a journey on the back of a donkey through a rugged piece of country. The ground over which you travel is a dry gravely soil, without a particle of vegetation. Having proceeded for some miles through a rocky valley, a sudden turn to the right takes you through a low range of sand-hills, and in less than a quarter of an hour you arrive at the forest. And such a forest! Trees lying prone on the ground, and transferred into stone. The world contains nothing so wonderful as a work of nature. On every side the prostrate forest extends as far as the eye can reach. Plains and rolling hillocks of sand sweep on and on to the horizon, all strewed thickly over with fragments of fallen trees. They lie at some places so close to each other, that a sure-footed Cairo donkey can scarcely thread his way through them: at other places they are few and far between, scarcely within stone-throw of each other, as if those had been the thickets, these the openings, in the forest. The trees are nowhere round in the surface, but sharp and angular, as if split by heat into many fragments. Few pieces are more than from four to six feet in length; but a series of these may often be seen lying end to end for a space of from fifty to sixty feet, as if the tree they constituted had been sawn or broken across, the pieces remaining in their places. The aspect of the fallen trunks is like that of the half rotten bog-wood found in an Irish or a Scottish morass. In hue, they are for the most part of a lightish chesnut-brown; some of them of a dusky-white, precisely of the color of common ash or pine long exposed to the weather. Of this tint are nearly all the smaller fragments, which often lie about as if chipped off from the larger ones. There are no fangs of roots or branches connected with the stems, but there are the rudiments of both in abundance. The knots indicating where branches once had been, are often of singular beauty and distinctness; sometimes so much so, as to seem fresh torn off the stem. The whole scene is the very picture of solitude and desolation, enhanced beyond that of the ordinary Desert――which leaves no token of ever having been more productive than it is――inasmuch as the remains around remind you that what is now salt and barrenness must once have been fertility and verdure. The trees, as already said, are mostly on the surface; many of them, however, are half-buried, others barely show themselves above the sand. The sand itself is light colored; the nodules of stone intermixed with it are rounded; sea-shells everywhere abounding. Near the edge of the forest there are what resemble the dry beds of small-sized streams and torrents: here the little cliffs displayed are of very soft limestone, full of oyster-shells, so fresh and bright, that they seem scarcely at all affected by the weather. They are of the transparent kind, nearly flat, and scarcely thicker than common paper. Selenite here abounds, as generally over the Desert, where sea-salt prevails. It is here for the most part fibrous, the fibers being horizontal, and at right angles to the axes of the vein. I took nearly half a ton of specimens home with me; and these, like the whole of the rest of my collection, were carried free of charge both by the Egyptian Transit and Steam Navigation Company. They were afterwards distributed amongst various of our public museums.

As for the nature of the trees, they are not palms, as their branches show; nor am I aware that there is any living race nearly kindred to them. They are completely silicified, ring like cast-iron, strike fire with flint, and scratch glass. How has this transformation been effected? By no chemical process now known to man. We have nothing at all analogous to it either in the laboratory of the chemist or that of nature. There is no substance more indestructible than charcoal. Cut off from air, it resists the most intense heats known to us, and remains in the bowels of the earth unscathed for millions of years! Here the whole woody and carbonaceous matter has vanished, and its place we find silica――the earth of flints, a substance nearly insoluble, and by itself infusible by any heat we are acquainted with. Yet so quietly and perfectly has the exchange been effected, that for every atom of charcoal that has been displaced, an atom of flint has been left behind. Textures and tissues so minute, that the help of microscopes is required for their detection――that their delineation can only be attempted after they have been much magnified――are changed in substance, but in substance only: the most minute and fragile of their forms remain as when the green leaves and bright blossoms drew their sustenance, and the vital fluids circulated through them. Egypt is the land of hoar antiquity; but what are the wonders of the mummy-case to this? The trees look as if they had fallen down, and been turned to stone on the ground where they grew; they look ‘like to a forest felled by mighty winds;’ they bear no marks of rolling or abrasion, such as that by which flints themselves are rounded. Yet all is sea-sand and shells everywhere; there is nothing to sustain vegetation; and whether the theory that they belong to an age previous to that of the rock in which they are occasionally imbedded, be adopted or not, it is clear that, subsequent to their assumption of their present form and condition, the ground on which they now repose sunk beneath, and rose again far above, the surface of the sea.