AND LOWER EGYPT. 2O3 



the track was clear. But the expeditions of the 

 Bedouin robbers, and, according to circumstances, 

 they all are so, are executed with so much promp- 

 titude, overtake the traveller so unexpectedly, from 

 cantons out of which no human being was looked 

 for, that the very act of robbery is the first signal of 

 their presence, and that it is far from a thing un- 

 common for travellers to become the victims of it. 



On leaving Alexandria, the course is to the east- 

 north-east, and you travel along the base of a pro- 

 montory which, from Alexandria, rises towards the 

 north. At its extremity is Aboukir, a town built 

 on the ruins of Canopus. The coast of this pro- 

 montory, as I have already remarked, is not so low 

 as that of the tower of the Arabs, and though 

 formed ot hillocks of sand, neither has it the same 

 aspect of solitude and sterility: human habitations, 

 and land in a state of cultivation, meet the eye. 



After riding about six leagues, you find yourself 

 on the brink of a kind of lake, a remainder of the 

 Canopic branch of the Nile. At present, to speak 

 properly, it is nothing but a salt-water marsh, 

 which has no longer any communication with the 

 Nile, except at the season of its greatest height. 

 It is fordable on horseback when the river, in its 

 inundation, or the sea raised by a tempest, have 

 not increased its depth ; in these cases it is crossed 



by 



