iOS TRAVELS IN UPPER 



Here the scene changes, as it were, by enchant- 

 ment ; the transition could not be more sudden, 

 nor the contrast more striking: it is no lopger a 

 series of those overwhelming ruins, of plains ren- 

 dered hideous by sterility ; it is Nature decorated 

 with all her costliness of apparel, and scattering 

 her gifts with magnificence unexampled, and v\ith 

 a profusion equally varied and uniformly sup- 

 ported. The eye, inflamed by a scorching sun, 

 torn by grains of sand scattered through a burn- 

 ing atmosphere, reposes dcliciously on a horizon 

 which presents to it images the most refreshing, 

 and smiling with the gayest aspect. 



Rossetta is a handsome city, very populous, sim- 

 ply but agreeably built. It is modern, and if it 

 does not contain edifices of an imposing architec- 

 ture, it displays nothing, at least, to excite disgust. 

 The Nile bathes its walls on the east side; ren- 

 dered less impetuous by the waters which it fur- 

 nishes, as it flows, to canals and watering conduits, 

 repelled besides by the bar which separates it from 

 the sea, at the place of its discharge, it has not the 

 dangerous rapidity of great rivers; it carries with 



the most correct of those who have traversed that part of Africa. 

 The most rational supposition that can be formed on the subject 

 is, that Shaw, just as almost every other body, travelled by 

 night from Alexandria to Rossetta. 



tranquillity 



