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cessors, the Ptolmies (301 years), and that by the Romans, 

 until the great plague in the time of Justinian, A.D. 542 

 which devastated, as a fearful epidemic scourge, the 

 whole of Egypt, Turkey and Europe, to the verge of the 

 Atlantic, sweeping away, according to Gibbon, a hundred 

 millions of people. True, the plague has been clearly 

 shewn from the Avritings of Rufus, of Ephesus, to have its 

 primary origin m Egypt, and that this was its native seat. 

 It is also now known to have existed there for, at least, two 

 centuries before Christ ; but then it was only known as a 

 rare and sporadic disease. It is now never seen in Upper 

 Egypt and Nubia, and need be no source of alarm to the 

 European invahd. Besides, no such person would visit 

 the country when the plague was known to prevail ; and 

 "it IS seldom that a case of plague presents itself in Alex- 

 andria during September and following months, until 

 February, and then only at intervals of several years. 

 Cairo is quite safe from the beginning of July, to the end 

 of March." 



Early marriages also, doubtless, somewhat contribute to 

 the great mortality of the young, as also do the numej-ous 

 intermarriages between near relatives. It is no unusual 

 thing for a girl of twelve years of age to be married and a 

 mother, and become a wrinkled hag at forty or forty-five 

 years of age. 



The males, however, having arrived at maturity, seem 

 remarkably free from disease, and are often muscular and 

 well formed, though not in general long-hved, as might be 

 expected from their habits, &c. It is therefore « rather 

 staggering," says Rhind, and few will here dissent from 

 him, " to find Father Alvarez declaring in the early part 

 of the seventeenth ceiitury, that he had seen in Ethiopia 

 powerful men at one-hundred and fifty years of age, and 

 that in Egypt there were more old men than in any other 

 couniry on the face of the earth." 



