EXPLORATIONS. 
SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. 
A REPORT ADDRESSED TO THE EMPEROR BY THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC 
INSTRUCTION. 
TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 
SrxTy-sIx years ago 40,000 men of the army of Italy and our most illustrious 
chief landed at Alexandria. The young general was followed not only by the 
bravest soldiers in the world, but by a whole colony of savants, who achieved, 
after their own manner, the conquest of Egypt by tearing away the veil in 
which its ancient civilization had, for fifteen centuries, been enveloped. By the 
researches of the Institute of Cairo the archeological sciences were renovated 
in Europe. Without the publication of the great work of the Description of 
Egypt, Champollion would never have conceived the design nor possessed the 
means of commencing the interpretation of the hieroglyphs which science had 
pronounced an inexplicable enigma, and France would have wanted the honor 
of having found the key to those inscriptions which have already explained so 
many symbols and doctrines, and revealed so many ideas concerning the religion, 
the history, and the chronology of that ancient world. 
It was on the banks of the Nile that Geoffroy Saint Hilaire conceived the 
first thought of his great system of anatomical philosophy; and if the levellings 
effected by his colleagues on the Isthmus of Suez, under the fire of the Arabs, 
were not exact, their idea of a communication between the two seas has not the 
less maintained its popularity to the day when, thanks to another Frenchman, 
it might become a reality. 
To the conquests of abstract science were added those of art. In the draw- 
ings which the expedition brought away our artists saw enlarged resources for 
the expression of the beautiful placed at their disposal. 
The labors of the Institute of Cairo were even attended with consequences 
of practical utility. The study of the climate and of the geographical condi- 
tions of the valley of the Nile led to the discovery of means for promoting the 
salubrity of the country and securing to its inhabitants a better hygiene. At 
this day the plague has almost disappeared, and, notwithstanding the frequency 
and facility of commercial intercourse, this scourge no longer arrives on our 
coasts to decimate our population, and, as in 1720, to snatch from Provence 
alone 85,000 of its inhabitants. It is to the medical investigations of the In- 
stitute of Egypt that we should refer the commencement of this great ameliora- 
tion. 
And while learned Europe was enriched with scientific facts, with ideas and 
forms of art, which the great work on Egypt threw into general circulation, Egypt 
itself, reanimated by the contact with our soldiers and savants, emerged from its 
lethargy. Several of its youth were consigned to a member of the Institute to 
be initiated in our European civilization; a number of our engineers were invited 
to the work of Egyptian regeneration; and if there is found to-day on the 
