AND LOWER EGYPT. I37 



to her unchangeable beneficence ! It was her will 

 to preserve on a parched and red-coloured soil, 

 and amidst the horrors of destruction, a point in 

 which she knew, in defiance of the efforts of bar- 

 barians who discerned her not, how to make some 

 articles of her beautiful dre^s to appear in shining 

 colours. It is with regret that the feet withdraw, 

 that the eyes turn aside from a spot which compa- 

 rison renders so enchanting. My pen exerts itself 

 to communicate to the reader the delightful sensa- 

 tions there excited in my own bosom. But we 

 must hasten to reach a country on which Nature 

 has lavished her treasures. That thought revives 

 my courage ; for we have still to wade through 

 sands, and must first plunge into the gloomy man- 

 sions ot the dead, into the catacombs. 



They are at a short distance from the canal : 

 they are galleries lengthening a prodigious way 

 under ground, or rather into the rock. They have, 

 in all probability, been at first the quarries which 

 furnished stones for the construction of the edifices ! 

 of Alexandria, and, after having supplied the men 

 of that country with the materials of their habita- 

 tions, while they lived, are themselves become their 

 last abode after death. Though vast, they did not 

 require very painful labour, the layer of sione being 

 wft and calcareous ; it is as white as that of Malta, 

 and, like it ; the consistence is increased by the im- 

 pression 



