were accordingly used for heating the 4,000 baths in the city. Just before the time of Mehemet Ali, Alexandria was a miserable place of a few thousand inhabitants, cut off from the valley of the Nile by the ruin of the ancient canal. Under his rule it greatly revived in political and commercial importance, and the re-opening of its canal has restored to its harbour all the trade of Egypt.
The principal articles of export are cotton, beans, peas, rice, wheat, barley, gums, flax, hides, lentils, linseed, mother-of-pearl, sesamum, senna, ostrich feathers, &c.
Those who are not given to pedestrian exercise can easily avail themselves of a cab or donkey, and they will find the streets, which are spacious and handsome, very pleasant to traverse, as they are all well paved in the city; but the dust outside the walls covers the ground from four to six inches deep, and in combination with the intense glare of the sun, and the wretched hovels of the natives, produces the ophthalmia so common, especially among the Arabs. Owing to the want of proper drainage, what would otherwise be a salubrious site is subject to malarious disease and the plague.
I have spoken of the Alexandrian library; quite as much may be said of the Alexandrian school; combined, they may be justly considered the first academy of arts and sciences.
The grammarians and poets are the most important among the scholars of Alexandria. These grammarians were philologists and literati, who explained things as well as words, and may be considered a sort of encyclopedists. Such were Zenodotus the Ephesian, who established the first grammar school in Alexandria; Eratosthenes, of Cyrene; Aristophanes, of Byzantium; Aristarchus, of Samothrace; Crates, of Mallus; Dionysius the Thracian; Appolonius the sophist; and Zoilus. To the poets belong Appolonius the Rhodian, Lycophron, Aratus, Nicander, Emphorion, Callimachus, Theocritus, Philetas, Phanocles, Timon the Philasian, Scymnus, Dionysius, and seven tragic poets, who were called Alexandrian Pleiads.
The most violent religious controversies disturbed the Alexandrian church until the orthodox tenets were established in it by Athanasius, in the controversy with the Arians.
Among the scholars are to be found great mathematicians, as Euclid, the father of scientific geometry, and whose work, I distinctly recollect, was a great bore to me in my younger days; Appolonius, of Perga, in Pamphylia, whose work on conic sections still exists; Nichomachus, the first scientific arithmetician; astronomers, who employed the Egyptian hieroglyphics for marking the northern hemisphere, and fixed the images and names (still in use) of the Constellations, who left astronomical writings (e.g., the Phœnomena of Aratus, a didactic poem; the Spherica of Menelaus; the anatomical works of Eratosthenes, and especially the Magna Syntaxis of the geographer Ptolemy), and made improvements in the theory of the calendar, which were afterwards adopted into the Julian calendar; natural philosophers, anatomists, as Herophilus and Erasistratus; physicians and surgeons, as Demosthenes Philalethes, who wrote the first work on diseases of the eye; Zopyrus and Cratenas, who improved the art of pharmacy and invented antidotes; instructors in the art of medicine, to whom Asclepiades, Loranus, and Galen owed their education; medical theorists and empirics, of the sect founded by Philinus. All these belonged to the numerous association of scholars continuing under the Roman dominion and favoured by the Roman emperors, which rendered Alexandria one of the most renowned and influential seats of science in antiquity. With this passing glance at Alexandria, we will journey on to Cairo.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FERTILIZING RIVERS OF EGYPT—LEAVE ALEXANDRIA—INCIDENTS EN ROUTE—SHEPHEARD’S HOTEL—ANCIENT AND MODERN CAIRO—THE DONKEY BOYS—ARAB PATIENTS—DANCING DERVISHES—THE HOUSE WHERE JOSEPH, MARY, AND THE INFANT SAVIOUR LIVED IN OLD CAIRO—THE BAULAC MUSEUM—THE PETRIFIED FOREST—MOKATTAM HILLS—TOMBS OF THE CALIPHS AND CITADEL—CAIRO AT SUNSET.
In former times, before the introduction of railways, the traveller to Cairo had to go by canal, hire a boat, servant; procure a carpet, mattress, and bedding; lay in a store of provisions, and a variety of minor articles that would fill a page or two to mention. Now we can go comfortably by rail in a few hours, the distance being something like 120 miles, I think.
We pass, en route, Lake Mareotis and the Mohmoudieh Canal, cultivated land near Alexandria, then a good deal uncultivated and desert; but as we approach Cairo, we see large tracts of cultivated land, all accomplished by irrigation, and I am told that as much as two or three crops in the year can be obtained off these lands without very great labour. A hot sun can always be depended on. The agricultural labourer has not to go through the laborious work of ploughing and manuring as in England. All he has to do is to scratch the ground, and put in the seed in the fertilizing alluvium which has been brought down from the rich lands of Meroe and portions of Abyssinia by the Athara river and its tributaries, the Salaam, Augrab, and the greater stream, Tacazze or Settite. All these rivers cut through a large area of deep soil, through which, in the course of ages, they have excavated valleys of great depth, and in some places of more than two miles in width. The contents of these enormous cuttings have been delivered upon the low lands of Egypt at the period of the inundations. The Athara is the greatest mud-carrier, then the Blue Nile, which effects a junction with the White Nile at Khartoum.
The White Nile is of lacustrine origin, and conveys no mud, but an excess of vegetable matter, suspended in the finest particles, and exhibiting beneath the microscope minute globules of green matter, which have the appearance of germs. When the two rivers meet at the Khartoum junction, the water of the Blue Nile, which contains lime, appears to coagulate the alluminous matter in that of the White Nile, which is then precipitated, and forms a deposit; after which the true Nile, formed by a combination of the two rivers, becomes wholesome, and remains comparatively clear, until it meets the muddy Athara. The Sobat river is a most important tributary, supposed to have its sources in the southern portion of the Galla country.
For the foregoing information on these rivers I am indebted to an article of Sir Samuel Baker’s, which I read with great interest in the Contemporary Review; and I daresay many of my readers will thank me for reproducing it.
After this slight digression, I will continue my journey to Cairo. At the stations were numbers of women and children with refreshments for the traveller in this land, where the sun always shines with a burning heat; women with goolehs of water to sell; children naked, or nearly so, with sugar-cane, melons, oranges, dates, fresh sugar-cane, figs, &c. Vast numbers of these poor creatures were afflicted with ophthalmia, their eyelids covered with flies, which they take no notice of whatever, many of them blind, or partially so, blind beggars; one and all, whether they can sell anything or not, continually uttering the cry of “Backsheesh, backsheesh, howaga,” which comes faintly on my ears as the train leaves the station. As we journey on there is much to be noticed. Now we pass a camp of Bedouins in the desert; next a large grove of date-palms (the owner of which has to pay a tax on every tree). Here the domestic buffalo walks round and round a circle; he is working the sakia or water-wheel, which winds up the water for irrigation. This is also taxed. Scattered all over the country are innumerable shadoofs, another mode, and the most ancient, of obtaining water; there the stately-looking camel strides along, looking intensely unconcerned. Trotting past him on his little donkey is an Arab in loose, white, flowing robes, and turbaned head. At one time we pass squalid, wretched-looking mud-huts; anon Nubians, as black as coal, working in the fields. We arrived at Cairo in the evening about seven, and were at once driven off to the well-knewn Shepheard’s Hotel. The cuisine is all that could be desired, and every attention is paid to insure the comfort of visitors. Mr. Grose, the manager, is a particularly obliging and attentive gentleman.
Cairo (in Arabic, Kahira, which signifies victorious) is the capital city of Egypt. It lies on the east bank of the Nile, in a sandy plain, and contains old Cairo, Boulac (the harbour), and new Cairo, which are, to a considerable
