322 JOHN LEDYARD. 



Mr. Short, and other friends. Deducting the week 

 I stayed at Paris, and two days at Marseilles, I was 

 only thirty-four days from London to this place. 



" I am sorry to inform you that I regret having 

 visited the gentleman you mentioned, and of having 

 made use of your name. I shall ever think, though 

 he was extremely polite, that he rather strove to 

 prevent my embarking at Marseilles than to facili- 

 tate it ; for, by bandying me about among the mem- 

 bers of the Chamber of Commerce, he had nearly, 

 and very nearly, lost me my passage ; and in the 

 last ship from Marseilles for the season. He knew 

 better: he knew that the Chamber of Commerce 

 had no business with me ; and-, besides, I only asked 

 him if he could without trouble address me to the 

 captain of a ship bound to Alexandria : nothing 

 more. 



"Alexandria at large presents a scene more 

 wretched than I have witnessed. Poverty, rapine, 

 murder, tumult, blind bigotry, cruel persecution, 

 pestilence ! A small town built on the ruins of an- 

 tiquity, as remarkable for its miserable architecture 

 as I suppose the place once was for its good and 

 great works of that kind. Pompey's Pillar and 

 Cleopatra's Obelisk are now almost the only remains 

 of remote antiquity. They are both, and particu- 

 larly the former, noble objects to contemplate, and 



