202 



otlier towns. The records of the plague sliew that it 

 makes its appearance iu Alexandria many days earlier 

 than in the interior. " In March, 1835, 4250 persons died 

 of plague, besides many whose deaths were not recorded, 

 out of a population not exceeding 30,000. Two-and- 

 twenty years previous to this, (namely, in 1813), 7000 

 persons are said to have died of plague out of a popula- 

 tion then not more than 12,000." The plague is extremely 

 rare in Upper Egypt and Nubia. The writer from whom 

 the above remarks are quoted, adds — " The climate of 

 Alexandria is, on the whole, salubrious, and was considered 

 eminently so by the ancients;" and, indeed, this was the 

 opinion, it would appear, of Diodorus, Celsus, Strabo, 

 Quintus Curtius, and other ancient writers. As a place 

 of vast commercial importance, Alexandria must be ranked 

 very high, but its ancient salubrity, as well as its gran- 

 deur, have disappeared.* At the present time poverty, 

 degradation, filth, and disease combine to finish the pictiu'e 

 which the swarms of mosquittoes, the small but most 

 irritating sandfly, the midnight Arab funeral wail, the 

 early crowing of innumerable cocks, the incessant braying 

 of donkeys, the howling and gTowling of miserable, starv- 

 ing dogs, might otherwise have left incomplete. 



Leaving Alexandria at nine a.m., travellers pass, in 

 comfortable carriages and at a moderate charge, by a one- 

 lined railway, in about six hours to Cairo, a distance of 

 one hundred and thuiy-two miles. The railway traverses 

 the fertile plain of the Delta, abounding in rice, cotton, 

 wheat, lentils, &c., and exhibiting at intervals mounds 

 covered with the wretched mud-built villages of the 

 Fellahs, with one or two towns of some interest. At one 

 of the stations, Kafi-Sejat, the train stops for a short 

 time, nominally in order that the passengers may take 

 some refreshment and rest, but in reality that the viceroy, 



* •' Heu quantum Niobe, Niobe distabiit ab ilia!" 



