200 



" Since the accession of Mohammed AH, innumerable 

 villages have been deserted, most of the towns and cities 

 have shrunk in their dimensions, the clothes of the people 

 have been exchanged for rags, their food has been dete- 

 riorated by many degrees, whole districts have been 

 thrown out of cultivation and are fast becoming a prey to 

 the sands of the desert, and the population has dwindled 

 from three millions to one million and a half, according to 

 the estimate of Sir Gardner Wilkinson." Many will be 

 disposed to agree with Miss Martineau, who visited 

 Alexandria in 1848, and thus writes: "Except in the 

 direction of the small and poor looking town, the area 

 within the new walls appears to contain little but dusty 

 spaces and heaps of rubbish with a few lines of sordid 

 huts and clumps of palms set down in the midst, and a 

 hot cemetery or two with its crumbling tombs. I have 

 seen many desolate looking places in one country or 

 another, but there is nothing like Alexandria as seen from 

 a height, for utter dreariness." "Nobody comes back to 

 Alexandria that can help it." 



It may be here incidently remarked that according to 

 the most authentic records, Egypt has undergone a 

 gradiial decrease, both in the number and size of its towns 

 and in its population. Making every allowance for Greek 

 and Roman exaggeration the fact seems undoubted. 

 According to Herodotus there were in the time of Amasis, 

 (about 525 to 570 years before Christ, and the era of 

 Thespis, Pythagoras, and ^sop), twenty thousand inha- 

 bited towns, and Diodorus says that eighteen thousand 

 were entered on the register. This historian also affirms 

 that in the Pharaonic era the population amounted to 

 seven millions, and that it was not less in his own time. 



In the time of Sesostris (Remeses ii.), before Christ 

 1355, the population would appear to be about sis millions. 

 Two centuries ago it was four millions ; at the commence- 



