EAKLY STEAMSHIPS 225 



everything is attributed to St. Paul, and your father would 

 have laughed had he had presented to him for sale (as I had) 

 some fossil sharks' teeth, 3 inches long, as the teeth of the 

 Apostle himself ! 



At this distance of time it is curious to recapture the im- 

 pression made on an old naval man by the ' terrible-looking ' 

 steamers among the white-sailed ships of all nations, the noble 

 line-of-battle ships, and the smart frigates ; and the same 

 epithet is repeated soon after when it is recorded that the 

 passage to Alexandria was long, * owing to contrary winds and 

 a head-sea, which though slight, were sufficient to retard the 

 SidoUf which despite her size and terribly grand look, is a very 

 poor steamer or sailer, after all.' 



The Alexandria of 1847 was a ' ruinous city of dirty white 

 houses straggling round a broad bay ' with ' outskirts horrible 

 to a degree,' consisting of clusters of huts, or rather mud hovels 

 not four feet high, grouped in squares about ten feet each way, 

 with a hole for the door and another to serve as a window. 

 Pompey's Pillar and the slave market were the two extremes 

 of interest for the sightseer. 



But he found the Pillar, * like all such attempts at effect, 

 a failure, as the mind does not perceive at once the gigantic 

 labour which the erection of such a single stone must have cost.' 

 The sight of it added nothing to the impression gathered from 

 books. The slave market was 



a small court about 30 feet square, surrounded with cells 

 of about 12 feet, devoted to the slaves of each nation. These 

 were dark and dirty, full of vermin, in spite of the smoke 

 of a fire in the middle of the earthen floor, which all but 

 suffocated the poor inmates. I saw only the Abyssinians, 

 two or three squalid wretches, in the most abject state of 

 dirt, disease, and suffering, from the smoke which inflamed 

 their poor eyes. They said nothing, but crouched behind 

 the door and up in the corner on my entering. 



The most agreeable episode connected with quitting the 

 \8idon at Alexandria was Lord Dalhousie's expression of the 

 friendship he had formed on the voyage for Hooker. ' On 



